Gold World News Flash |
- Crude Oil, Gold Vulnerable as Sentiment Sours Across Financial Markets
- China pours billions into Japanese stock market
- Silver Bomb
- Build your own Gold Reserves
- Lying central bankers are gold and silver’s best friend, says Sprott
- THE SILVER BOMB: It's An Opportunity That Will Never Happen Again… $500+ Silver IS Coming
- GGR Courtesy Sample: ‘Simple Secret Weapon’
- High Anxieties: The Mathematics of Chaos
- Wolfgang Schäuble: Ask Not What Germany Can Do For You, Ask How Many Government Workers You Can Fire
- munKNEE.com: The Most Viewed Posts of the Last 30 Days ? Did You Miss Reading Any?
- Ministry of [Un]Truth
- Deciphering Silver
- Gold and Silver Ending a Week of Shenanigans
- Inspiring Address by Ronald Reagan (1964)
- US debt is too big for financial repression – Charles Goyette and Alasdair Macleod
- Weekly article posted at GoldMoney
- Is JPMorgan worried about its potential $18 billion dollar loss? Perhaps not, when it could be offset by $14 billion in United States taxpayer subsidies
- “Whether the rumors are true or not, and they likely are, JP Morgan’s troubles will have a positive effect on the price of silver. “
| Crude Oil, Gold Vulnerable as Sentiment Sours Across Financial Markets Posted: 24 Jun 2012 07:04 PM PDT courtesy of DailyFX.com June 24, 2012 11:00 PM Crude oil and gold prices appear vulnerable as a BIS warning about the limitations of central bank stimulus sink risk appetite and boost the US Dollar. Talking Points [LIST] [*] Crude Oil, Copper Vulnerable as BIS Warns on Limits of Loose Monetary Policies [*] Gold and Silver May Decline if Risk Aversion Stokes Haven Demand for US Dollar [/LIST] Commodities appear vulnerable after the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) said despite central banks being “cornered” into prolonging monetary stimulus, accommodative policies “have their limits” in its annual report. The statement weighed on sentiment in Asian trade, disappointing traders hopeful that the Federal Reserve will help the fragile US recovery offset headwinds from sluggish performance in Europe and Asia with a third quantitative easing effort (QE3), which policymakers opted against last week. A pair German and French bond auctions h...
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| China pours billions into Japanese stock market Posted: 24 Jun 2012 03:42 PM PDT By Agence France-Presse http://www.brecorder.com/top-news/1-front-top-news/63891-china-pours-bil... TOKYO -- Europe's financial turmoil has seen the Chinese government quietly pour tens of billions of dollars into Japan's stock market, analysts say, despite the neighbours' lingering historical animosity. For years the two Asian powerhouses have eyed each other suspiciously with frequent diplomatic spats flaring over territorial claims and longstanding disputes, largely stemming from Japan's wartime record. But with economic ties improving and Europe in a debt crisis, an ever more practical Beijing is buying up shares of Japanese firms as it looks for safer places to park its mountainous foreign-exchange reserves, the world's largest. A fund known as OD05 Omnibus, widely viewed as linked to Beijing, was a major shareholder in 174 Japanese firms by the end of March, including names such as Toyota and Nikon, said a survey by the Nikkei business daily. ... Dispatch continues below ... ADVERTISEMENT Prophecy Platinum Announces Wellgreen Preliminary Economic Assessment: Company Press Release VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Canada -- Prophecy Platinum Corp. (TSX-V: NKL, OTC-QX: PNIKF, Frankfurt: P94P) reports the results of an independent NI 43-101-compliant preliminary economic assessment for its fully owned Wellgreen nickel-copper-platinum group metals project in the Yukon Territory. The independent assessment, prepared by Tetra Tech, evaluated a base case of an open-pit mine (with a mining rate of 111,500 tonnes per day), an on-site concentrator (with a milling rate of 32,000 tonnes per day), and an initial capital cost of $863 million. The project is expected to produce (in concentrate) 1.959 billion pounds of nickel, 2.058 billion pounds of copper, and 7.119 million ounces of platinum, palladium, and gold during a mine life of 37 years with an average strip ratio of 2.57. The financial highlights of the preliminary economic assessment, shown in U.S. dollars, are as follows: Payback period: 3.55 years Prophecy Chairman John Lee says: "We are pleased with the preliminary economic assessment results. The numbers indicate that Wellgreen is one of most exciting mineral projects in the Yukon. The company is drilling to upgrade and expand the resource base. The infrastructure is excellent as the project is only 1,400 meters in altitude and 14 kilometers from the paved Alaska Highway, which leads to the Haines deep seaport. Discussions are under way with support from local stakeholders regarding permitting and logistics." For the complete press release, please visit: http://prophecyplat.com/news_2012_june18_prophecy_platinum_announces_res... The paper put the value of its Japan investments at a record 3.58 trillion yen ($45 billion). The survey showed the fund's shareholdings have more than tripled since 2008, when the collapse of Wall Street titan Lehman Brothers triggered an unprecedented shock to the global financial system. The ownership of Omnibus, reportedly based in Australia, has never been publicly acknowledged. But dealers view it as being backed by China's sovereign wealth fund, China Investment Corp. (CIC), and charged with helping manage some of Beijing's more than $3.0 trillion foreign currency war chest. "When Europe is in such financial turmoil, Beijing needs to diversify its investment destinations," said Tsuyoshi Ueno, senior economist at NLI Research Institute in Tokyo. "China has so much in foreign currency reserves, and they need to invest it in blue-chip companies." The CIC's chairman has reportedly said the fund was scaling back its European equity and bond holdings, telling the Wall Street Journal this month that "there is a risk that the eurozone may fall apart and that risk is rising." Japan's economy has struggled for years, but it is increasingly seen as a port in the storm for investors, while Europe struggles to rein in its finances and questions swirl about a solid recovery in the United States. Omnibus's portfolio includes a 1.9 percent stake in Toyota, a 2.2 percent holding in rival automaker Honda, a 1.9 percent share of camera giant Nikon, and a 2.5 percent stake in construction machinery maker Komatsu, the Nikkei survey said. A Toyota spokeswoman declined comment on individual holdings of its stock, saying it was "up to investors what shares they invest in." The Nikkei figures come at a time when Tokyo and Beijing forge ever closer economic ties, two years after China wrested the title of world's second-largest economy from Japan, a longtime export powerhouse. Recent Bank of Japan data showed China has become a major holder of Japanese government and corporate debt, outpacing the United States and Britain. In March, China, which is Japan's largest trading partner, approved Tokyo buying its government bonds, a move that analysts said appeared to be the first time a major economy had bought debt directly from Beijing. The Asian powers have also started direct trading between the Chinese yuan and the yen to ease cross-border business, including corporate acquisitions which have often been completed using dollars. The agreement the yen is the only major currency other than the greenback to trade directly against the yuan comes as Beijing continues its long-term bid to turn the yuan into a global unit rivalling the dollar. A Chinese fund manager said Omnibus quietly invests in a cross-section of corporate Japan, but deliberately keeps its stake well below majority ownership. However, "there is nothing wrong with the Chinese investment, and it's not bad news for Japanese companies," said Yasuyoshi Masuda, an economics professor at Japan's Toyo University. He acknowledged Japan should be wary of Chinese government investment in firms with links to the military or secret technology, said that otherwise "Japan's stock market should welcome foreign capital investment." "It's not like the Chinese fund owns more than 50 percent of a major Japanese firm," he added. Join GATA here: 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: 24 Jun 2012 03:38 PM PDT - Paper silver prices have been subjected to severe downward pressure lately. If you identify yourself with the chap who wrote "I purchased my physical silver at $45.88/oz" and viewed your silver purchases as an investment rather than a store of wealth, this interview may help calm some nerves. Sean of SGTreport interviews Michael McDonald, co-author of the new [...] 
This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now | ||
| Posted: 24 Jun 2012 02:30 PM PDT by Jan Skoyles, Gold Switzerland:
Lars Schall: Jan, how did it come that you have developed an interest in the issue of precious metals? Jan Skoyles: Before my final year at university I had a summer job at Cheviot Asset Management as an administrative assistant. Here, I met Ned Naylor-Leyland who manages a precious metals fund at Cheviot. His opinions are often sought after in regard to gold and silver markets, by both the precious metals media and the mainstream media. At the time, I was looking for a subject on which to write my dissertation/thesis in my upcoming final year of my International Business and Economics degree. Ned persuaded me to write it on the use of precious metals in the monetary system. I wrote my dissertation between October 2010 and May 2011, by about the January I knew that this was more than just an academic interest for me; I knew that it was a world I wanted to be involved in. One thing that is important to note is that throughout my economics degree I had felt like nothing ever 'clicked', everything was based on models and ideal situations. Where were the people? Where were the historical examples of this theory in practice? Writing about precious metals in the monetary system led me to discover the Austrian school of economics and all of a sudden economics made sense to me. L.S.: One feature of the financial crisis is a lack of transparency. Do you consider this also as a factor of concern in the realm of precious metals?
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| Lying central bankers are gold and silver’s best friend, says Sprott Posted: 24 Jun 2012 02:25 PM PDT from Arabian Money:
He has just issued a major statement on the market (click here) and we have selected a couple of extracts below. This is what you need to know. The central banks are lying and if you listen to them you will be the loser… Eurozone crisis growing 'We have no doubt that everyone is tired of bad news, but we are compelled to review the facts: Europe is currently experiencing severe bank runs, budgets in virtually every western country on the planet are out of control, the banking system is running excessive leverage and risk, the costs of servicing the ever-increasing amounts of government debt are rising rapidly, and the economies of Europe, Asia and the United States are slowing down or are in full contraction. 'There's no sugar coating it and we have to stop listening to politicians and central planners who continue to downplay, obfuscate and flat out lie about the current economic reality. Stop listening to them.
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| THE SILVER BOMB: It's An Opportunity That Will Never Happen Again… $500+ Silver IS Coming Posted: 24 Jun 2012 01:54 PM PDT
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| GGR Courtesy Sample: ‘Simple Secret Weapon’ Posted: 24 Jun 2012 01:30 PM PDT from Got Gold Report:
"There are all kinds of issues that trouble the markets at present. Europe, Greece, Spain, France, Italy, massive money printing, Iran, Egypt, India, China slowing, the upcoming U.S. election in November, colossal sovereign debts and unsustainable deficits in the developed socialist and rapidly becoming socialist West … and those troubles just scratch the surface. All those nasty problems and the large corrections for precious metals have conspired to produce a vicious buyer's strike for the companies we call The Little Guys. We think there is a common thread running through all these issues and although people are in tremendous fear at the moment, all of these global problems seem to be supportive for the future of gold and silver. We think that gold and silver are being reclaimed by the global markets as the preferred and "safe" currency. All things considered, that is the keystone of our long term strategy. Everything else is secondary.
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| High Anxieties: The Mathematics of Chaos Posted: 24 Jun 2012 11:14 AM PDT from Jesse's Café Américain:
David Malone, Debt Generation This documentary was started in 2007 by David Malone and Mark Tanner on commission from the BBC. David had finally persuaded the network that a financial collapse was coming, a situation which he had been watching and documenting for some years. It was finally finished on 12 September 2008, the Friday before the collapse of Lehman Brother. Two days later it was aired on BBC4. David Malone writes a financial blog Golem XIV. A number of people had been warning of a collapse including myself. The bubble in housing and dodgy credit was apparent to anyone who had eyes to see, the time and training to look, and a mind unclouded by conflicts of interest. Read More @ Jesse's Café Américain:
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| Wolfgang Schäuble: Ask Not What Germany Can Do For You, Ask How Many Government Workers You Can Fire Posted: 24 Jun 2012 10:12 AM PDT
From Kathimerini:
In other words, the Troika which was supposed to come to Greece tomorrow to evaluate what little progress may have happened in order to release more cash to the insolvent country, will not have to wait until after the latest and greatest European summit, where while everyone was expecting for absolutely nothing to be decided (and certainly not the European Federalist state which is the only development that can keep the Eurozone together), suddenly the very fate of Greece in the Eurozone is once again at stake and may be decided as soon as next Friday.
Well, the detached retina may have been a fluke, and surely anyone would faint when seeing the Greek cash ledger, but adding insult to injury, and making some wonder about the odd timing of these events, is that it is suddenly becoming public knowledge what was previously only whispered in dark corridors: namely that Greece was pretending to be reforming in exchange for money that Europe was pretending to be paying Greek society. An AFP report observes that "Greece breached the rules of its EU-IMF loan agreement by taking on some 70,000 public sector staff in two years, undermining efforts to reduce the state payroll, a report said on Sunday."
It appears that all those myths of austerity were just that (as we have explained time and time again): myths.
And while it is true that the bulk of the Greek "bailout" money went primarily to pay Greek creditors and the ECB, a good 20% of the cash did make its way into the Greek economy... Somewhere. Perhaps soon someone will ask just where. Did the politicians in charge of the country in the past two years steal all of that cash as well? What happens when the Greek society, now with absolutely no hope left, and more despondent than ever, finds out that its leaders once again betrayed it? Just how many Golden Dawn members will there be in the next government election, once this government too tumbles. Tying it all together, however, and making sure that Samaras' cabinet is doomed before the ink of its formation documents is even dry, is everyone's favorite Schrodinger finance minister (Now you see a bailout, now you don't): Germany's Wolfgang Schauble who just told Greece for the final time: no mas.
So while wild speculations about this and that and the other future of the Eurozone continue, here is the bottom line: Germany will continue pushing every peripheral country closer to the brink (which helps Germany courtesy of increasing pressure on the EURUSD, which benefits the only real net exporter and mercantilism beneficiary in the Eurozone - Germany - by now only absolute economic dilettantes don't seem to understand this) until such time as PIIGS (and then all the other formerly core - here's looking at you socialist "fairness doctrine" entrants) come begging for any scrap that whoever is in charge of Germany will be willing to hand them, in the form of a Debtor In Possession loan of course, and thus accretive to Bunds. If that means presenting their gold to the German Cash4Gold pawn shop under the guise of a Redemption Fund or whatever it is called, so be it. Unless of course, everyone keeps demanding that Germany bail them out. In which case Merkel will just unpack that brand spanking new shipment of DEMs and be done with it. The only winner out of this: Syriza's Tsipras who is sitting and cackling like a madman as everything is happening precisely as had been anticipated. Until the moment, that is, when he is elected to lead the country. At that point we are not sure whose life will be more of a living nightmare: his... or whoever is elected president in the US 2016 elections.
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| munKNEE.com: The Most Viewed Posts of the Last 30 Days ? Did You Miss Reading Any? Posted: 24 Jun 2012 07:10 AM PDT Over the past 30 days*www.munKNEE.com has had over 100,000 visitors who have come to read the best articles the internet has to offer.*Edited excerpts of*91 articles were posted over that time period to swell the archive of articles to more than*1600 in total. Below*is a list of the 10 most read articles*in the last 30 days complete with*introductory paragraphs and*links to each. So says Lorimer Wilson, editor of www.munKNEE.com (Your Key to Making Money!) and it’s feeder site www.FinancialArticleSummariesToday.com (A site for sore eyes and inquisitive eyes). [COLOR=#000000]1. Martin Armstrong Clearly Explains Why the USD is Strong and Gold Weak in This Terrible Economic Environment[/COLOR]Understanding what we are facing right now is critical to our survival…. [and to do so] we must embrace a global correlation approach to comprehend the true global implication of how capital moves. [Martin Armstrong provides a remarkable explanation of what is going on right now with the U.S....
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| Posted: 24 Jun 2012 07:04 AM PDT By Eric Sprott & David Baker Speaking at a Brussels conference back in April 2011, Eurogroup President Jean Claude Juncker notably stated during a panel discussion that "when it becomes serious, you have to lie." He was referring to situations where the act of "pre-indicating" decisions on eurozone policy could fuel speculation that could harm the markets and undermine their policies' effectiveness.1Everyone understands that the authorities sometimes lie in order to promote calm in the markets, but it was unexpected to hear such a high-level official actually admit to doing so. They're not supposed to admit that they lie. It is also somewhat disconcerting given the fact that virtually every economic event we have lived through since that time can very easily be described as "serious". Bank runs in Spain and Greece are indeed "serious", as is the weak economic data now emanating from Europe, the US and China. Should we assume that the authorities have been lying more frequently than usual over the past year? When former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan denied and down-played the US housing bubble back in 2004 and 2005, the market didn't realize how wrong he was until the bubble burst in 2007-2008. The same applies to the current Fed Chairman, Ben Bernanke, when he famously told US Congress in March of 2007 that "At this juncture…the impact on the broader economy and financial markets of the problems in the subprime markets seems likely to be contained."2 They weren't necessarily lying, per se, they just underestimated the seriousness of the problem. At this point in the crisis, however, we are hard pressed to believe anything uttered by a central planner or financial authority figure. How many times have we heard that the eurozone crisis has been solved? And how many times have we heard officials flat out lie while the roof is burning over their heads?Back in March, following the successful €530 billion launch of LTRO II, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi assured Germany's Bild Newspaper that "The worst is over… the situation is stabilizing."3 The situation certainly did stabilize…for about a month. And then the bank runs started up again and sovereign bond yields spiked. Draghi has since treaded the awkward plank of promoting calm while slipping out enough bad news to ensure the eurocrats stay on their toes. As ING economist Carsten Brzeski aptly described at an ECB press conference in early June, "Listening to the ECB's macro-economic assessment was a bit like listening to whistles in the dark… It looks as if they are becoming increasingly worried, but do not want to show it."4 And the situation has now deteriorated to the point where Draghi can't possibly show it. Although Draghi does now warn of "serious downside risks" in the eurozone, he maintains that they are, in his words, "mostly to do with heightened uncertainty".5 Of course they are, Mario. Europe's issues are simply due to a vague feeling of unease felt among the EU populace. They have nothing to do with fact that the EU banking system is on the verge of collapsing in on itself. When Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy assured the Spanish press that "There will be no rescue of the Spanish banking sector" on May 28th, the Spanish government announced a $125 billion bailout for its banks a mere two weeks later.6 This apparent deceit was not lost on the Spanish left, who were quick to dub him "Lying Rajoy". But Mr. Rajoy didn't seem phased in the least. As the Guardian writes, "Even when the outpouring of outrage forced Rajoy to call a hasty press conference the next day, he still refused to use the word "bailout" - or any other word for that matter - and referred mysteriously to "what happened on Saturday". He went as far as to say that Spain's emergency had been "resolved" ("thanks to my pressure", he said). He then took a plane to Poland to watch the national football team play ("the players deserve my presence")."7 Sound credible to you? Then there are the bankers. Back in April, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon blithely dismissed media reports as a "tempest in a teapot" that referred to massively outsized derivative positions held by the bank's traders in the Chief Investment Office in London. That "tempest" was soon revealed to have resulted in a $2 billion trading loss for the bank roughly four weeks later. In testimony before the Senate Banking Committee this past week, Dimon explained that "This particular synthetic credit portfolio was intended to earn a lot of revenue if there was a crisis. I consider that a hedge."8 He went on to add that regulators "can't stop something like this from happening. It was purely a management mistake."9 That's just wonderful. Can we expect more 'mistakes' of this nature in the coming months given JP Morgan's estimated $70 trillion in derivatives exposure? And will the US taxpayer willingly bail out JP Morgan when it does? Everyone knows the derivatives position wasn't a hedge - but what else is Dimon going to say? That JP Morgan is making reckless derivatives bets overseas with other people's money that's backstopped by the US government? Credibility is leaving the system. There is certainly a sense that the authorities can no longer be candid about this ongoing crisis, even if they want to be. On June 11th Austria's finance minister, Maria Fekter, opined in a television interview that, "Italy has to work its way out of its economic dilemma of very high deficits and debt, but of course it may be that, given the high rates Italy pays to refinance on markets, they too will need support."10 Her honesty sent Italian bond yields soaring and earned her some harsh criticism from eurozone officials, including Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti. As one eurozone official stated, "The problem is that this is market sensitive… It's one thing if journalists write this but quite another if a eurozone minister says it. Verbal discipline is very important but she doesn't seem to get that."11 See no evil, hear no evil… and speak no evil. That's the way forward for the eurozone elites. We have no doubt that everyone is tired of bad news, but we are compelled to review the facts: Europe is currently experiencing severe bank runs, budgets in virtually every western country on the planet are out of control, the banking system is running excessive leverage and risk, the costs of servicing the ever-increasing amounts of government debt are rising rapidly, and the economies of Europe, Asia and the United States are slowing down or are in full contraction. There's no sugar coating it and we have to stop listening to politicians and central planners who continue to downplay, obfuscate and flat out lie about the current economic reality. Stop listening to them. NOTHING the central bankers have done up to this point has WORKED. All efforts have simply been aimed at keeping the financial system from imploding. QE I and II haven't worked. LTRO I and II haven't worked, and the most recent central bank initiatives are not even producing short-term benefits at this stage of the crisis. Just take Spain, for example. Following Rajoy's announcement of the $125 billion bailout loan for the Spanish banks on June 10th, Spanish bond yields were trading back over 7% one week later - the same yield level at which other eurozone countries have been forced to ask for further international aid.12 The market still doesn't even know what entity is going to pay the $125 billion, let alone when the funds will actually be released or whether the Spanish government will have to count it as part of its national debt. Spain is the fourth largest economy in the eurozone and larger than the previously bailedout Greece, Ireland and Portugal combined. At this point, it's not even clear if the ECB will be allowed to bail out a country of Spain's size, let alone Italy, which is now asking the ECB to use bailout funds to buyits sovereign bonds.13 The situation in Europe is becoming an exercise in futility. The positive effects of LTRO I and II, which combined pumped in over €1 trillion into European banks back in December 2011 and February 2012, have now been completely erased by the recent bank runs in Spain. Of the €523 billion released in LTRO II, roughly €200 billion was taken by Spanish banks.14 Of that amount, roughly €61 billion was estimated to have been reinvested back into Spanish sovereign bonds, which temporarily helped Spanish bond yields drop back to a sustainable level below 5.5%. Fast forward to today, and despite the LTRO infusions, the Spanish banks are all broke again after their underlying depositors withdrew billions over the past six weeks. The only liquid assets Spanish banks still own that they can sell to raise euros just happen to be government bonds… hence the rise in Spanish yields. So in essence, the entire benefit of the LTRO, which was a clever way of replenishing Spanish bank capital AND helping calm sovereign bond yields, has been completely reversed in roughly 14 weeks. It's as we've said before- it's not a sovereign problem, it's a banking problem. This is why Spanish Prime Minister Rajoy is now pleading for help "to break the link between risk in the banking sector and sovereign risk."15 Without a healthy sovereign bond market, peripheral eurozone countries simply have no way of supporting their bloated and insolvent banks. The smart money is finally waking up to the dimension of the problem here and realizing that it's really a banking issue. Deposit flight has revealed the vulnerability of the European banking system: when depositors make withdrawals, the only assets the banks can sell to raise liquidity are sovereign bonds, which creates the vicious downward spiral that up to this point has always resulted in some form of central bank bailout. Many eurozone authorities still have trouble understanding this. As Spanish Economy Minister, Luis de Guindos, recently stated to reporters at the G20 Summit, "We think… that the way markets are penalizing Spain today does not reflect the efforts we have made or the growth potential of the economy… Spain is a solvent country and a country which has a capacity to grow."16 Every country has the capacity to grow. Not every country has a domestic banking system that has already borrowed €316 billion from the ECB so far this year (pre the most recently announced bailout), and needs to rollover roughly €600 billion in bank debt in 2012.17That may be why the markets are reacting the way they are. If you want to know what's really going on, listen to the executives of companies that actually produce and sell things. On May 24, Tiffany & Co cut its fiscal-year sales and profit forecasts blaming "slowing growth in key markets like China and weakness in the United States as shoppers think twice about spending on high-end jewelry."18 On June 8th, McDonald's surprised the market with lower than expected same-store sales growth in May, following a lacklustre April sales report that the company stated was "largely due to underperformance in the United States, where consumers continue to seek out very low-priced food."19, 20 On June 13th, Nucor Corp., the largest U.S. steelmaker by market value warned that its second-quarter profit will miss its previous guidance after a "surge" in imports undermined prices and "political and economic uncertainty affect buyers' confidence".21 On June 20th, Proctor and Gamble lowered its fourth quarter guidance and profit forecast for 2012. Factors that drove the company's challenges included "slow-to-no GDP growth in developed markets", high unemployment levels, significant commodity cost increases and "highly volatile foreign exchange rates".22 Other companies that have recently lowered guidance include Danone, Nestle, Unilever, Cisco Systems, Dell, Lowe's, and Fedex. It's ugly out there, and many companies are politely warning the market about the type of environment they foresee ahead in both the US and abroad. To give you a hint of how bad it is in Europe today, the most recent retail sales out of Netherlands showed a decline of 8.7% year-over-year in April.23 In Spain, retail sales fell 9.8% year-on-year in April, which was 6% greater than the revised drop of 3.8% in March.24 Declines of this magnitude are not normal occurrences and signal a significant shift in spending within those countries. We fear this is a sign of things to come within the broader Eurozone, which will only serve to complicate an already dire situation that much more. The G6 central banks are out of conventional tools to solve this financial crisis. With interest rates at zero, and the thought of further stimulus rendered politically unpalatable for the time being, we cannot see any positive solutions to this problem other than debt repudiation. We continue to note the contrast between the reporting companies who by law cannot lie about their fiscal realities, versus the central planners who admit that they MUST lie to preserve calm and control. We'll leave it to you to decide whose version of the truth you want to believe. Source: Sprott Asset Management http://www.sprott.com/markets-at-a-glance/ministry-of-%5Bun%5Dtruth/ Footnotes available at the link above. Thanks to Ed Steer and several Vultures for the link to this offering.
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| Posted: 24 Jun 2012 05:50 AM PDT [url]http://www.traderdannorcini.blogspot.com/[/url] [url]http://www.fortwealth.com/[/url] The internet has been awash with comments recently about the downdraft in silver and the strong increase in Open Interest on last week's big down day. As usual, the chatter is about an orchestrated attempt by JP Morgan to smash the price of silver lower so that they can cover their "losing short position". Let me first state that I am a firm believer in the view that the US government has a vested interest in controlling the price of gold. Being a good friend of GATA, we both have ridden through the ups and down of this together for the last decade. However, that being said, not every move lower, particularly in the Silver market, is the result of efforts by Morgan. Part of the problem that some of the authors have, authors whom I might add see every single move lower in silver the result of price capping by Morgan, is that they do not understand how traders, particularly large traders, react...
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| Gold and Silver Ending a Week of Shenanigans Posted: 24 Jun 2012 05:10 AM PDT Gold and Silver Ending a Week of Shenanigans Well, we can say goodby to this week, and good riddance to what proved to be a rough week for the metals bulls and miner mavens, except for the good news that Harvey Organ's illness was not life threatening and he will be fine it appears.
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| Inspiring Address by Ronald Reagan (1964) Posted: 24 Jun 2012 03:46 AM PDT First in a series. One of the finest speeches by "The Gipper," Ronald Wilson Reagan. From October, 1964. So many memorable and important lines in this speech. Below are a few. "I've spent most of my life as a democrat. I have recently seen fit to follow another course." "We have $15 billion of gold in our treasury. We don't own an ounce. Foreign dollar claims on our treasury are 23.7 billion dollars."
Video and more important quotes below.
Quotes.
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| US debt is too big for financial repression – Charles Goyette and Alasdair Macleod Posted: 23 Jun 2012 11:30 PM PDT Bestselling author of The Dollar Meltdown and Red and Blue and Broke All Over, Charles Goyette, talks to the GoldMoney Foundation's Alasdair Macleod. Goyette states that members of the Fed are ...
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| Weekly article posted at GoldMoney Posted: 23 Jun 2012 08:05 PM PDT The following article has been posted at GoldMoney, here. The unseen hand2012-JUN-23
 I have written about GDP before, but to refresh the reader’s memory, GDP is basically the sum total of recorded business activity at the consumption level plus government spending expressed in money terms. If the government spends more, GDP rises; give more money to consumers, GDP rises; give more bank credit to consumers or business, GDP rises. Cut government spending, GDP falls. This is not contentious and has nothing to do with economic progress. Importantly, it excludes future entrepreneurial activity, except to the extent that an entrepreneur has actually spent some money putting his future plans into action. The obsession with GDP means that entrepreneurial activity, which is Adam Smith’s unseen hand that guides our future, is invisible to economic planners. If that was the only consequence of confusing a money quantity with economic progress the results would not be so serious. Instead, misleading statistics such as GDP are leading all governments into bad policy decisions, and their choice has narrowed down to either ever-greater reflationary attempts to pump up GDP, or alternatively facing a collapse in the GDP number as bank credit contracts. The situation facing the eurozone already precludes any compromise between these extremes, while other nations believe they can print their way out of this difficulty. The twin errors of misunderstanding GDP are the failure to see that monetary inflation is concealing a deepening economic depression, and it encourages policies that destroy entrepreneurial activity, or economic progress itself. This is a deadly combination, the equivalent of being in a hole and continuing to dig. We cannot expect politicians to stop digging deeper and faster when their economic advisors are calling for more shovels. All politicians are fully committed to the fallacies that result from confusing GDP with economic progress. They pursue economic policies that are the equivalent of eating their own children. The children being eaten are savers, increasingly raided to sustain the status quo: savers whose savings are a precondition for entrepreneurial activity, and without which increasing numbers of us become reliant on the state. There can be little hope that this lunacy will be abandoned while statistical nonsense such as GDP growth persists. The underlying economic depression, evidenced by high levels of unemployment, is symptomatic of economies burdened by misallocated resources. The solution is to do exactly the opposite of actions currently being pursued. To quote Calvin Coolidge: “Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration has been minding my own business. Government shouldn't play a part in everyday life." It is still possible to do this. What is required in our leaders is a sound understanding of economics instead of belief-based neoclassicism. Thus armed, a politician should be able to explain the proper course of action to the reasonable majority, and implement it with their support. Tags: euro crisis, GDP, unemployment Alasdair Macleod 
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| Posted: 23 Jun 2012 06:55 PM PDT JPMorgan & Other Financials Still Receiving Billions Annually From U.S. Taxpayer
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| Posted: 23 Jun 2012 05:14 PM PDT JP Morgan: Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining
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May-June 2012: The Matterhorn Interview:
Eric Sprott, the self-made billionaire CEO of Sprott Asset Management is one of the world's most successful investors in commodities. He's been very vocal as a supporter of silver as the asset class of this decade.
Here's my new interview with Michael McDonald co-author of the new book 'The Silver Bomb: Beyond the Return of Metal as Money'. This book is a comprehensive and shocking must-read, especially for folks to whom this information is new, AND for folks who feel so beaten up by the Bankster cartel paper games that they're ready to bail on the physical silver story altogether. "$500+ silver is coming" says Michael, "Million dollar silver is even possible when measured in worthless dollars".
Excerpt from the GGR Appendix for June 18, 2012: 
"The hyper-rich are facing something worse than death: becoming 
And it seemed like the most innocent case of detached retina ever. On Friday, newly elected Greek PM Samaras | You are subscribed to email updates from Save Your ASSets First To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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