saveyourassetsfirst3 |
- Eye of the Phoenix: Secrets of the Dollar Bill
- Determining the value of gold
- 3 Stocks Upgraded On September 25 To Consider
- Judge Throws Out CFTC's Position Limits Rule
- South East Asian oil peak in the rear view mirror: Part I
- Silver Technicals: Month Ending September 2012
- Top 5 Stocks With Insider Sells Filed On September 28 To Consider
- Precious Metals with John Embry
- The Myth of the Gold Supply Deficit
- Economic Ice Age portrayal of Europe, It’s the hidden stuff that gets you
- This is Why I Never Listen to These Sumbitches
- Top 5 Stocks With Insider Buys Filed On September 28 To Consider
- Peak Gold, easier to model than Peak Oil ? Part II
- Growth And A 'Golden' Dividend: 4 Stocks Offering Both
- Links for 2012-09-28 [del.icio.us]
- 39% Of South African Gold Production Is Now Offline
- $2.7 bn IMF gold sales profits to help poor
- Afghan gold fever heats up
- Turkish trade deficit falls 30pc on gold sales to Iran
- The Acceptance House
- Judge throws out CFTC's position limits rule
- gold's worth more than platinum? Wow, it was 2/3rds of platinum's price 5-6 years ago
- By the Numbers for the Week Ending September 28
- Why Does Our Society Look Down On Unemployed Men So Much?
- Dwarf Bowlers and Muslim Movie Critics Assemble
- Downside: After the Returns Stop Diminishing II
| Eye of the Phoenix: Secrets of the Dollar Bill Posted: 29 Sep 2012 09:41 AM PDT Props to DF. Move to hour 2:00 and wade into the deep. Modern masonry claims that the all-seeing eye floating above the pyramid is not a Masonic symbol. But what did Freemasons President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his Masonic Vice President, Henry Wallace, believe when they attached this symbol to our currency in 1935? from deslacheable: How were these American leaders influenced by the Russian mystic, Nicholas Roerich? Does the all-seeing eye represent the Masonic Christ? Was the eagle originally a phoenix bird? And what do all these occult symbols mean? ~TVR |
| Posted: 29 Sep 2012 07:00 AM PDT When considering whether gold is a value investment, one needs to first recognise that gold does not have a balance sheet, management team, price-earnings ratio or any of the other things one needs to ... |
| 3 Stocks Upgraded On September 25 To Consider Posted: 29 Sep 2012 06:30 AM PDT By Jorge Aura: Speculating on companies that have recently changed their ratings can be a good short-term strategy. Normally, companies will see increases in their prices after these changes. The ratings are updated daily and can therefore change daily. They can change because of a change in the analyst's estimate of the stock's fair value, a change in the analyst's assessment of a company's business risk, or a combination of any of these factors. I assessed companies which were upgraded on September 25, and I chose the top three companies with a change on ratings. These significant changes are:
These ratings are a way to qualify how the analyst views the potential for stock price appreciation. When an analyst changes his/her rating, the security's price may Complete Story » |
| Judge Throws Out CFTC's Position Limits Rule Posted: 29 Sep 2012 05:40 AM PDT ¤ Yesterday in Gold and SilverIt was a nothing sort of trading day in gold yesterday, which is not exactly what I was expecting. Gold inched up to its high of the day early in London trading, before selling off gradually until the close of Comex trading...and then it traded sideways into the 5:15 p.m. Eastern time electronic close. Gold finished at $1,771.10 spot...down $6.50 on the day. And despite the fact that there was no price action worthy of the names, the net volume in gold was still very heavy at around 165,000 contracts.
It was precisely the same story in silver. The silver price made one brief attempt to get above the $35 spot price mark about thirty minutes before London opened...but that failed and the silver price went into a steady decline all day long from there, hitting its low of the day [$34.21 spot] at 3:00 p.m. in electronic trading. From there it rallied a bit into the close. Silver closed at $34.49 spot...down 17 cents on the day. Net volume was pretty chunky...around 50,000 contracts.
The dollar index opened around 79.55 in the Far East...and then worked its way lower, with its low tick of 79.38 coming shortly after 10:00 a.m. in London. It rallied just a bit until 9:00 a.m. in New York before really taking off to the upside. But, as has been the case for the last two or three days, the rally stalled the moment it got within spitting distance of the 80.00 mark...and then chopped sideways into the 5:30 p.m. electronic close. The index closed at 79.894...up about 35 basis points from Thursday's close. There was no sign that this big dollar index rally [60 basis points off its London low tick] had any effect on gold and silver prices at all yesterday.
The gold stocks gapped down a bit more than a percent at the open, but by 10:30 a.m. Eastern time, they were back in the black. This happy state of affairs didn't last long...and the shares soon were back in the red...and then chopped sideways into the close. The HUI finished down 0.58%.
Not surprisingly, the silver stocks didn't do that well...and Nick Laird's Silver Sentiment Index closed down 1.20%.
(Click on image to enlarge) The CME's Daily Delivery Report for 'Day 2' of the October delivery month showed that 1,549 gold and 84 silver contracts were posted for delivery on Tuesday within the Comex-approved depositories. In gold, the two big short/issuers were Deutsche Bank with 1,000 contracts [another big round number]...and Citigroup with 404 contracts. The two biggest long/stoppers were JPMorgan [for the second day in a row] with 1,172 contracts...779 for its in-house proprietary trading desk...and 393 in their client account. The Bank of Nova Scotia was second with 274 contracts. In silver, the two short/issuers were Credit Suisse First Boston with 53 contracts...and Jefferies with the other 31 contracts. The biggest long/stopper was the Bank of Nova Scotia with 73 contracts. There were about a dozen issuers and stoppers all told in gold...and the I&S Report, like yesterday, is worth a few seconds of your time. The link is here. There were no reported change in GLD yesterday, but an authorized participant withdrew an eye-watering 3,874,904 troy ounces of silver from SLV. That's a lot...and since there was no price activity to warrant such a withdrawal, the only conclusion that one can reach is that the silver was more desperately needed elsewhere.
There was no sales report for the last day of September from the U.S. Mint...but there's a small chance that they may add some on Monday if they couldn't report on Friday for whatever reason. We'll see. But based on the current sales figures for September...68,500 ounces of gold eagles...8,500 one-ounce 24K gold buffaloes...and 3,255,000 silver eagles, the silver/gold sales ratio checked in at a bit over 42 to 1. While I'm on the subject of silver/gold ratios, here's the 1-year chart of that ratio based on the closing spot price of both metals. Based on these figures, the silver/gold ratio was 51.35 at the close of trading on Friday.
(Click on image to enlarge) The CME's Daily Delivery Report shows that 598,846 troy ounces of silver were added on Thursday...and a smallish 11,465 troy ounces were shipped out. The link to that activity is here. Well, I was dismayed at what was contained in yesterday's Commitment of Traders Report. I was hoping for a small improvement, but got sizeable declines instead...especially in gold. In silver, the Commercial net short position increased by 1,185 contracts...bringing the Commercial short position up to 51,659 contracts, or 258.3 million ounces. Ted Butler figures that JPMorgan went short another 1,000 contracts during this reporting week...and their current short position is probably north of 30,500 Comex futures contracts, or 152.5 million ounces. This represents about 20% of Planet Earth's yearly silver production. How much more grotesque can you get than that. The 'Big 4' traders [which includes Morgan] are short more than 43.9% of the Comex futures market in silver on a net basis...and the '5 through 8' largest traders add another 8.6 percentage points to that...minimum. The 'Big 8' are short 52.5% of the entire Comex silver market...and JPMorgan holds well over half of that 52.5% short position all by itself. In gold, the Commercial net short position increased by another 12,722 contracts, which now sits at a total of 262,355 contracts, or 26.24 million ounces. Ted says that the Raptors covered about 6,000 contracts of their record short position...and the 'Big 4' went short an additional 19,000 contracts...all of the 12,700 contract increase in the Commercial net short position PLUS the 6,000 short contracts that the Raptors sold to them. JPMorgan et al are bailing out their little friends in the Commercial category...and going short against all comers, as the '5 through 8' traders stood there with their hands in their pockets. The 'Big 4' short holders are short 16.30 million ounces...and the '5 through 8' largest traders are short an additional 5.34 million ounces of gold. Together, the 'Big 8' short holders are short 21.64 million ounces of gold. As a percentage of the entire Comex futures market in gold, the 'Big 4' are short 35.7%...and the '5 through 8' are short an additional 11.7 percentage points. All together, the 'Big 8' are short 47.4% of the entire Comex futures market on a 'net' basis. These are minimum numbers, as I'm using the legacy COT report...and if you subtract the spread trades that show up in the Disaggregated COT Report, then the concentrated positions of these 'Big 8' shorts is even higher. And the 'Big 8' shorts in gold are virtually the same as the 'Big 8' shorts in silver. I would bet some serious money that almost all the 'Big 8' are comprised of the market making members of the LBMA...the "usual suspects"...as these crooks manage markets from both sides of the Atlantic...London and New York, and from elsewhere, I'm sure. Here's Nick's "Days of World Production to Cover Short Positions" chart that you should know well by now. Just over three quarters of the red bar in silver is held by JPMorgan and, by extension, well over 50% of the green bar as well.
(Click on image to enlarge) Silver analyst Ted Butler had this to say about the situation in his previous Saturday's commentary about the COT on September 21st...and not a thing has changed since then. So what he said then, basically still holds true now... "There is no excuse possible that would permit JPMorgan to hold 31% of the entire net COMEX silver market (minus spreads) or for the four largest shorts to hold 49% of COMEX silver (as of the most recent COT). Just to give you a sense of the lopsided nature of big shorts compared to big longs, on the same methodology (no spreads) the 4 biggest longs hold only 13.4% of the COMEX silver market. JPMorgan, alone, holds a position more than 2.3 times larger than the 4 biggest longs combined. That's obscenely manipulative. Plus, JPMorgan has been virtually the only active short seller in COMEX silver for months." Here's a chart that Nick Laird sent me in the wee hours of Thursday morning, which I just didn't have time to stick in my column yesterday, so here it is now. The chart title...Gold/Silver Ratio: Future Projections...is worth fantasizing about. So pick your gold price...and let your imagination run wild.
(Click on image to enlarge) Here's another chart...this one courtesy of Washington state reader S.A....and I know where he stole this one from, so I will use Miles Franklin's introduction to it here... "Laura, our editor slipped this in yesterday, with little fanfare, but I want to call it to your attention. "This is a new chart I asked her to compose for our readers. It compares, in easy-to-follow format, where the price of gold is at the close of each day, compared to one-year ago. As you can see, up until recently, gold was falling way behind its previous year's performance. But now the tide has turned. It is rapidly moving ahead of last year and rest assured; gold will finish the year WAY ahead of last year's close in the mid $1,550s. "This is what the chart looked like yesterday...Wednesday. Note: gold was UP $125.30. That number should be rising almost every day from now on and could easily top $300 by year's end. (As I am putting the finishing touches on the Friday daily at 2:30 a.m. this number is now up to $170 and rising. That puts gold up 10.6% in the last year! Silver, which was looking pretty ugly earlier this year, is up 13.07% from last year on this day too.)
(Click on image to enlarge) Here's Washington state reader S.A.'s second purloined contribution of the day. I wouldn't vouch for the accuracy of this data, as it's provided by the World Gold Council...and especially suspect are the gold holdings of the world's central banks.
I have an embarrassingly large number of stories for you today, for which I make no apologies...as the final edit is up to you. So, we're still where we were a week ago...except that now the 'Big 4' traders are even more massively short gold and silver. Gold logs best quarter since 2010, Silver outperforms everything in Q3. IMF keeps pretending it had to sell gold to help poor countries. 3.87 million ounces of silver withdrawn from SLV...two days of world silver production. ¤ Critical ReadsSubscribeBusiness Activity in U.S. Shrinks for First Time Since 2009Business activity in the U.S. unexpectedly contracted in September for the first time in three years, adding to signs manufacturing will contribute less to the economic recovery. The Institute for Supply Management-Chicago Inc. said today its business barometer fell 49.7 this month from 53 in August. A reading of 50 is the dividing line between expansion and contraction. Uncertainties surrounding domestic fiscal policy and weakening economies in Europe and China may prevent companies from adding to headcount and ramping up production. Slow growth prospects prompted the Federal Reserve to announce more accommodation measures earlier this month in a bid to help spur the three-year-old expansion. This Bloomberg story was posted on their website mid-morning on Friday...and I thank Ulrike Marx for our first story of the day. The link is here.  BofA to Pay $2.43 Billion to End Investor Lawsuit Over MerrillBank of America Corp. agreed to pay $2.43 billion to investors who suffered losses during its acquisition of Merrill Lynch & Co. in the largest settlement yet of a class-action shareholder lawsuit stemming from 2008's financial crisis. The bank will incur a $1.6 billion litigation expense in the third quarter, the Charlotte, North Carolina-based company said yesterday in a statement. The firm may post a loss for the period after projecting that legal costs, valuation adjustments and tax charges will reduce earnings per share by about 28 cents. Bank of America has faced regulatory probes, investor lawsuits and criticism from lawmakers over claims it didn't warn shareholders about spiraling losses at Merrill before they voted to buy the brokerage in January 2009 for $18.5 billion. Under yesterday's settlement, Bank of America promised to overhaul corporate-governance policies. This is another story from Bloomberg...and this one was posted on their website late yesterday afternoon...and I thank Donald Sinclair for his first offering in today's column. The link is here.  New York Plaza District Offices Empty as Banks Cut SpaceManhattan's Plaza district, the area near Central Park that commands the nation's highest office rents, has a glut of space as financial firms cut back and tenants seek trendier neighborhoods south of Midtown. The availability rate for offices in the Plaza submarket reached 12.3 percent last month, a two-year high, as space leased to Citigroup Inc. and General Motors Co. went on the market, according to data from brokerage Colliers International. It was 10.5 percent in the third quarter of last year. The Plaza district -- the area between Sixth Avenue and the East River from 47th to 65th streets, anchored by the landmark Plaza Hotel at Fifth Avenue and Central Park South -- is home to some of the nation's most expensive and prestigious office towers, including the General Motors Building and 9 W. 57th St. About 30 percent of the market is financial-service firms, which have announced about 60,000 job cuts worldwide this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. "The Plaza's weakness is symptomatic of a larger problem," said Michael Knott, a real estate investment trust analyst with Green Street Advisors Inc. in Newport Beach, California. "Manhattan's economic engine is not firing, and that, of course, is finance." This another story from Bloomberg. This one was posted on their website just before lunch Eastern time...and I thank Donald Sinclair for sending it. The link is here.  Student-Loan Default Rates Rise as Federal Scrutiny GrowsMore than one in 10 borrowers defaulted on their federal student loans, intensifying concern about a generation hobbled by $1 trillion in debt and the role of colleges in jacking up costs. The default rate, for the first three years that students are required to make payments, was 13.4 percent, with for-profit colleges reporting the worst results, the U.S. Education Department said today. The Education Department has revamped the way it reports student-loan defaults, which the government said had reached the highest level in 14 years. Previously, the agency reported the rate only for the first two years payments are required. Congress demanded a more comprehensive measure because of concern that colleges counsel students to defer payments to make default rates appear low. "Default rates are the tip of the iceberg of borrower distress," said Pauline Abernathy, vice president of The Institute for College Access & Success, a nonprofit based in Oakland, California. This is the third story in a row from Bloomberg...and this one was posted on their Internet site in mid-afternoon on Friday...and I thank Ulrike Marx for her second story in today's column...and the link is here.  TSA Agent Gets Caught Stealing IPad!Wow! You can't make |
| South East Asian oil peak in the rear view mirror: Part I Posted: 29 Sep 2012 05:40 AM PDT  Grandiose statements about the "Asian Century" are now being followed by warnings that the days of rivers of gold from China are over. Economic growth needs growing quantities of oil. Where will it come from? Not from South East Asia which peaked in 2000 as will be shown in this article. Hubbert's Peak is alive and well in South East Asia and Australia. As I...and many others...have carefully pointed out for the last number of years, we are already on the down-side slope of Hubbert's Peak. The "New Great Game" is all about oil...and who controls it. |
| Silver Technicals: Month Ending September 2012 Posted: 29 Sep 2012 05:22 AM PDT Silver Month Ending September 2012 ~TVR |
| Top 5 Stocks With Insider Sells Filed On September 28 To Consider Posted: 29 Sep 2012 05:11 AM PDT By Markus Aarnio: I screened with Open Insider for insider sell transactions filed on September 28. From this list, I chose the top five stocks with insider selling in dollar terms. Here is a look at the top five stocks: 1. Thermon Group (THR) provides highly engineered thermal solutions, known as heat tracing, for process industries, including energy, chemical processing and power generation. Thermon's products provide an external heat source to pipes, vessels and instruments for the purposes of freeze protection, temperature maintenance, environmental monitoring and surface snow and ice melting. Thermon is headquartered in San Marcos, Texas. Click to enlarge Insider sells
Complete Story » |
| Precious Metals with John Embry Posted: 29 Sep 2012 05:07 AM PDT EMA presents an exclusive interview with John Embry, Chief Investment Strategist from Sprott Asset Management. from tradingtalk: ~TVR |
| The Myth of the Gold Supply Deficit Posted: 29 Sep 2012 04:30 AM PDT |
| Economic Ice Age portrayal of Europe, It’s the hidden stuff that gets you Posted: 29 Sep 2012 03:51 AM PDT European Central Banker Mario Draghi and his buddies keep up their media-smoothing talky-talk, but reality lurks just under the surface. How interesting that mother nature can tell a complete story with no words required. Spain is doomed. When they go down, so does all of Europe and the world's economies in unison. Europe was depression-smashed in the 1930s partly from World War One reparations. "The Great Depression severely affected central Europe. The unemployment rate in Germany, Austria and Poland rose to +20% while output fell by -40%. By November, 1932, every European country had increased tariffs or introduced import quotas." Editor: This time around jobless rates will be closer to +40%. "Under the USA Dawes Plan, the German economy boomed in the 1920s, paying war reparations and increasing domestic production. Germany's economy retracted in 1929 when Congress discontinued the Dawes Plan loans. This was not just a problem for Germany. Europe received almost $8 billion USD in American credit between 1924 and 1930 in addition to previous war time loans. "Germany's Weimar Republic was hit hard by the depression as American loans to help rebuild the German economy now stopped. Unemployment soared, especially in larger cities. Repayment of the war reparations due by Germany were suspended in 1932 following the Lausanne Conference of 1932. By that time, Germany had repaid 1/8 of the reparations. People were devastated about how the Weimar Republic dealt with the economy. "Falling prices and demand induced by the crisis created an additional problem in the central European banking system, where the financial system had particularly close relationships with business. In 1931, the Creditanstalt bank in Vienna collapsed, causing a financial panic across Europe. Austria simply collapsed." –Wikipedia Current Euro conditions improved on Mario Draghi's "print as needed" bond statement. Euro currency recovered and peaked on overbought US Dollar. Should Euroland face a severe credit problem that worries markets, it could easily sell to 127.82 support or 123.89 on the primary moving averages. A Spanish bond failure or negative German voter refrendum might be the catalyst driving values in these currencies.   This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| This is Why I Never Listen to These Sumbitches Posted: 29 Sep 2012 03:23 AM PDT |
| Top 5 Stocks With Insider Buys Filed On September 28 To Consider Posted: 29 Sep 2012 01:44 AM PDT By Markus Aarnio: I screened with Open Insider for insider buy transactions filed on September 28. From this list, I chose the top 5 stocks with insider buying in dollar terms. Here is a look at the top 5 stocks: 1. Republic Services (RSG) is an industry leader in the U.S. non-hazardous solid waste industry. Through its subsidiaries, Republic's collection companies, transfer stations, recycling centers and landfills focus on providing reliable environmental services and solutions for commercial, industrial, municipal and residential customers. Republic and its employees believe in protecting the planet and applying common sense solutions to customers' waste and recycling challenges. (click to enlarge) Insider buys Cascade Investment purchased 493,810 shares on September 28, 1,200,773 shares on September 26-27 and 1,648,155 shares on August 1-2. Cascade Investment currently holds 78,043,643 shares of Republic Services. Republic Services has 365,276,656 shares outstanding which makes Cascade Investment a 21.4% owner of Republic Services. Cascade Investment Complete Story » |
| Peak Gold, easier to model than Peak Oil ? Part II Posted: 29 Sep 2012 01:30 AM PDT The Oil Drum |
| Growth And A 'Golden' Dividend: 4 Stocks Offering Both Posted: 29 Sep 2012 12:23 AM PDT By The third quarter came to a close this weekend and it was the best since Q3 of 2010. For gold and silver, it was an incredible quarter as the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) and the iShares Silver Trust (SLV), ETFs that track gold and silver prices, were up 11.1% and 25.5%, respectively, in the quarter. The gold mining stocks outperformed gold itself in the quarter, as I suggested they might do back in July, with the Market Vectors Gold Miners ETF (GDX) and the Market Vectors Junior Gold Miners ETF (GDXJ) appreciating 20.7% and 29.0%, respectively. The move in gold and precious metals stems from two sources. First was the anticipated central bank action as gold and silver moved up on every rumor and nearly every central bank meeting. Gold and precious metals continued their ascent when central banks finally acted. First we had the European Central Bank's announcement of Complete Story » |
| Links for 2012-09-28 [del.icio.us] Posted: 29 Sep 2012 12:00 AM PDT
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| 39% Of South African Gold Production Is Now Offline Posted: 28 Sep 2012 10:41 PM PDT |
| $2.7 bn IMF gold sales profits to help poor Posted: 28 Sep 2012 10:39 PM PDT |
| Posted: 28 Sep 2012 10:36 PM PDT |
| Turkish trade deficit falls 30pc on gold sales to Iran Posted: 28 Sep 2012 10:35 PM PDT |
| Posted: 28 Sep 2012 10:00 PM PDT Gold University |
| Judge throws out CFTC's position limits rule Posted: 28 Sep 2012 07:19 PM PDT Judge throws out CFTC's position limits rule WASHINGTON | Fri Sep 28, 2012 3:42pm EDT (Reuters) - A U.S. judge handed an 11th-hour victory to Wall Street's biggest commodity traders on Friday, knocking back tough new regulations that would have cracked down on speculation in energy, grain and metal markets. Judge Robert Wilkins of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia threw out the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission's new position limits rule, and sent the regulation back to the agency for further consideration. Wilkins ruled that, by law, the CFTC was required to prove that the position limits in commodity markets are necessary to diminish or prevent excessive speculation. He also ruled that the amendments to the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial oversight law "do not constitute a clear and unambiguous mandate to set position limits, as the Commission argues." The ruling is a major victory to traders just two weeks before parts of the new position limits rule were scheduled to go into effect. The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association and the International Swaps and Derivatives Association brought the suit against the CFTC, arguing that the regulations would force their members to drastically alter their businesses, cost them tens of millions of dollars, and send customers fleeing. Wall Street has also long argued that regulators have not proven that position limits would curb speculation in markets and prevent disruptive price spikes. The CFTC and industry groups that brought the suit did not immediately have comment. The agency passed the position limit rule last year, in a bid to limit the number of contracts traders can hold in 28-commodities, including oil, coffee and gold. (Reporting By Alexandra Alper and Karey Wutkowski; Editing by James Dalgleish) http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...88R1C120120928 |
| gold's worth more than platinum? Wow, it was 2/3rds of platinum's price 5-6 years ago Posted: 28 Sep 2012 07:08 PM PDT what happened? I know what drove gold's price up, but why didn't platinum's price go up with it? I heard that S. Africa opened a platinum mine. was that enough to do it, on a small market for platinum? |
| By the Numbers for the Week Ending September 28 Posted: 28 Sep 2012 05:58 PM PDT This week's closing table is just below.
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| Why Does Our Society Look Down On Unemployed Men So Much? Posted: 28 Sep 2012 04:46 PM PDT
It can be really hard to "feel like a man" when you aren't making any money. And most women simply are not interested in becoming romantically involved with an unemployed man. Just check out what one recent survey found....
Those are some pretty overwhelming numbers. So is it the same way when the roles are reversed? Not even close. When men were asked the same question, the difference was absolutely shocking....
Admittedly, men are often thinking about other things when they are evaluating whether they want to date a women or not. Yes, there are some men these days that are concerned about how much money a woman makes, but the truth is that men tend to be much less concerned about income levels than women are. In fact, a UK study that was released last year discovered that British women are even more concerned about the education and income of a potential mate than they were back in the 1940s. So if you are unemployed you are probably not going to find much success in the romance department either. If you are married, being unemployed is likely to put a huge strain on your marriage. The following is a short excerpt from a recent Business Insider article entitled "TRUE CONFESSION: I'm Sick Of My Unemployed Husband"....
If a husband is unemployed for an extended period of time, there is a very good chance that the wife is going to start feeling very resentful. If things get bad enough, many women will pull the plug on their marriages and will get rid of their "unproductive" husbands. Last year, Time Magazine reported on a study that indicated that unemployed men were significantly more likely to get divorced than employed men were. My goal in writing this is not to "bash women". I am just pointing out how hard things are for unemployed men in our society. Many wives (and their extended families) simply do not understand that our economy has fundamentally changed. In the old days just about any hard working man that wanted a job could go out and get one. That is most definitely NOT the case today. Hopefully we can get more women to understand this. I know that it can be hard to be patient when your husband is unemployed for month after month after month. But at a time when husbands need their support the most, many wives withdraw emotionally and become very angry. For example, how many women have you ever heard declare how proud they are of their unemployed husbands? Of course there are definitely situations where these roles are reversed and employed husbands are badgering their unemployed wives about getting a job, but in general our society tends to have a greater degree of tolerance for unemployed women than it does for unemployed men. Sadly, most people simply do not understand how dramatically things have changed in our economy. The following chart shows the stunning decline in the percentage of working age men with a job over the past 60 years....
Back in the 1950s, there were times when nearly 85 percent of all working age men had jobs. We will never get back to anything close to that ever again. Prior to the last recession, about 70 percent of all working age men were employed. Since the end of the recession, that number has not gotten back to 65 percent at any point. That means somewhere around 5 percent of all working age American men have been displaced from the workforce permanently. The mainstream media would have us believe that we are experiencing an "economic recovery" but that is a massive lie. The real unemployment numbers are much worse than we have been told. If you take a look at all working age Americans (men and women), there are actually more than 100 million of them that do not have jobs right now. I know that statistic can be hard to believe. I had a hard time believing it at first. But it is actually true. Meanwhile, the incomes of those who are working continue to fall. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, median household income in the United States has fallen for four years in a row. But this is not a trend that just started recently. According to one study, between 1969 and 2009 the median wages earned by American men between the ages of 30 and 50 dropped by 27 percent after you account for inflation. We are in the midst of a long-term economic decline and it is time for all of us to admit how bad things have really gotten. So what are all of the men who are not working doing these days? Well, there are some that have chosen to stay at home with the kids. In a previous article, I discussed how the number of "stay at home dads" has doubled over the past decade. But the overall percentage of "Mr. Moms" is still very, very low according to Fox News....
The vast majority of working age men still want to work outside of the home and earn a living for their families. Unfortunately, most families need more than one income to make it these days. In fact, in many cases both parents are working multiple jobs in an attempt to make ends meet. Meanwhile, the number of good jobs continues to decline and the middle class in America continues to shrink. This is hitting our young people that are just starting out particularly hard. For example, during 2011 53 percent of all Americans with a bachelor's degree under the age of 25 were either unemployed or underemployed. And as I have written about previously, this is resulting in huge numbers of our young people moving back home with Mom and Dad. This is particularly true when it comes to young men. According to CNN, American men in the 25 to 34 age bracket are nearly twice as likely to live with their parents as women the same age are....
How are our young men going to be able to get married and start families if they can't find jobs and they are living in our basements? Sadly, things are really hard for everyone right now. Since June 2009, we have supposedly been in "the Obama recovery", but median household income in America has fallen during that time period by $3040. People keep waiting for things to "get better", but it just isn't happening. This was beautifully illustrated the other night during a Saturday Night Live skit that had "Barack Obama" speaking in front of a rally of unemployed and underemployed workers. You can find video of that skit right here. There are millions upon millions of men (and women) all over America that are ready and willing to go back to work. Sadly, there will never be enough jobs for all of them ever again, and that is not going to change no matter who wins the election. In fact, when the next wave of the economic collapse hits the United States it is likely that unemployment is going to get a whole lot worse. What will our society look like when that happens?
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| Dwarf Bowlers and Muslim Movie Critics Assemble Posted: 28 Sep 2012 04:05 PM PDT Before we get to dwarf bowling, what's going on in the stock market? A round of central bank intervention in Japan, Europe and the US hasn't sent the market soaring. In fact, it's fallen. Why? Denis Ouellet from News-to-use.com reckons QE may not affect the stock market after all. At least, that it might not be the primary driver. Conventional wisdom reckons money printing is causing share prices to go up. And the charts back up that story. Each time money is printed, shares rise. But there's another chart with the same relationship. Corporate profits, or earnings per share, are rising with equity prices too. It might seem blatantly obvious that earnings drive share prices. A business is worth what it makes in profits. But what happens if profits fall while the money printing continues? We may be about to find out. Ouellet's third chart shows that sales haven't risen with the stock market in the same way profits have. By the way, this means you can't say that inflation is increasing dollar profits at the same time as share prices. No, the earnings must be coming from somewhere else if sales haven't been rising as fast as profits. Oullet knows where: 'Cost cutting (mostly labor) and increasing productivity.' If you fire your least productive worker you get both. But that only works for a while. Eventually, sales will limit profits. Suddenly the earnings growth analysts expected based on the past will fail to materialise. And then stocks could fall, money printing or no. Greg Canavan was onto the story of suspiciously high corporate profits in his August issue of Sound Money. Sound Investments. Of course, not all stocks experience this problem at the same time. Some are even set to benefit as things begin correcting. The secret to how this will happen is in currencies. And Australian investors are in the perfect position to profit. We'll reveal how once we've whittled down our list of Aussie companies set to increase profits while others fall.
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| Downside: After the Returns Stop Diminishing II Posted: 28 Sep 2012 04:00 PM PDT
[Ed Note: You can read the previous instalment of Bill's new book here] "You can't be too safe," is an expression you hear from time to time. The government takes it upon itself to protect its citizens. It suggests that you can't spend too much on military preparedness and that defense is too important to be left to popular preference. Leaders think they know better; they insist. But is military spending really not subject to declining marginal utility? And what happens after even the marginal returns are gone? Germany's experience in WWII shows what you can get from 'too much' military spending; it was almost pure downside. But it was not obvious at first. Central planning can do a good job of imitating real progress - at least in the short run. And in the '30s, Germany's economy began to look a lot like a success. Factories - reacting largely to orders from the military - began to recruit more labor. At the same time, the ranks of the army grew, removing able men from the workforce. The result was a lower unemployment rate. Joblessness had been as high as 6 million at the beginning of 1933, with capacity utilization as low as 50%. That was when the 'Battle for Work' began. Only 6 months later, East Prussia was declared "free from unemployment." How was this miracle achieved? "The jobless of East Prussia were ruthlessly conscripted," explains Adam Tooze in his book The Wages of Destruction. "Thousands of married men were herded together in 'camps of comradeship.' Where they were subjected to a heavy program of earth-moving and political education..." Economists, as we have mentioned, are not able to measure quality, only quantity. They cannot distinguish a ton of steel used in a battleship from the same quantity rolled out and pressed into automobiles. They cannot tell the difference between a man who is growing wheat from one who is distributing propaganda leaflets. But from an employment point of view, the Nazi war economy was rarely surpassed. Unemployment went down after 1933...and kept going down for the next 12 years. When the end came, Germany not only had zero unemployed workers. It had an unemployment rate that had gone deeply negative, with millions more people holding jobs than there were people in the German workforce. How did it achieve this amazing result? Not by increasing the number of real jobs. It did it be reducing the labor force, not only in Germany, but throughout Europe. In Germany alone, 4 million men were taken out of the labor pool for service in the Wehrmacht. When they overran France in May of 1940, the Germans captured 1.2 million Frenchmen. And in 1941, the Third Reich relieved 3.3 million Russians - most of them permanently - from the need to seek employment. As the war continued, Germany's labor force continued to shrink. Forty thousand people were killed in the firestorm set off by the British air force in Hamburg. But losses at home were nothing compared to the losses abroad. Stalingrad cost them 91,000 soldiers. Tunisia cost them 230,000 German and Italian troops. The Wehrmacht was then fighting on three fronts. East. West. And South. Losses to its armies had to be replaced. By the war's end, a third of the boys born between 1915 and 1924 were either dead or missing. This forced the planners to reach further into the population...particularly the farm population. Economists could do some fun ciphering with these numbers. The unemployment rate dropped to zero early in the war...and then it kept going down. Women - who were not really part of the workforce, since they had never worked in the job market and had no desire to get a job - were nevertheless dragooned into the factories to replace their fallen husbands and brothers. And when this source was exhausted, the unemployment went negative even further. A slave is not usually considered part of the labor pool. He is not someone who is looking for work. He is not someone who responds to an ad in the 'help wanted' pages. He is not someone who is likely to pay into a pension or sue his employer. And yet, bringing millions of these workers into the German economy had a remarkable effect on the unemployment rate. There were soon far more laborers than the entire measure of the labor force. By the end of the war, nearly one of every 4 workers was a foreigner - many of them there against their will. As a percentage of the workforce, unemployment had reached a phenomenal level - at about MINUS 25%. Economists must have been delighted. Their numbers had never looked so good. The first large group of laborers were Poles. There was already a precedent for using these foreigners on a seasonal basis in German agriculture. As more German men were called away from farms, more foreign farm labor was used. The first slave laborers in the Fatherland were 300,000 Polish soldiers captured in the 1939 attack. Then, by the spring of 1940 another 200,000 Polish civilians were brought in. Then, after the attack on France, the number of slave laborers swelled by 1.2 million prisoners of war - most of them French. At first, the Poles were recruited with promises of reasonable pay and food. Thousands signed up. However, the Nazis' Übermensch delusions soon spoiled the business. The civilian Poles were treated as badly as the captured soldiers. They were housed in prisons and so poorly fed that many died. After a few months, they were so weak from hunger and mistreatment that they had to be shipped back to Poland. Tooze quotes an eyewitness:
"There were dead passengers on the returning train. Women on that train gave birth to children that were tossed from the open window during the journey...people sick with tuberculosis and venereal disease rode the same coach. The dying lay in cars without straw, and one of the dead was thrown onto the embankment." Word got around. Recruiters could no longer get the Poles to sign up as voluntary 'Ostarbeiter' But the demand for labor did not slack off. It increased, and voluntary recruitment soon turned into outright slavery. The biggest source of slaves, or near-slaves, was the Soviet Union, where approximately 2.7 million Soviets are believed to have been rounded up to work in Germany after 1941. Surprisingly one group who fared particularly badly in the hands of German employers was their own erstwhile ally - the Italians. Italy dropped out of the war in the autumn of 1943. Rather than let them go over to the allies, Germany took prisoner every Italian soldier it could lay hands on. These were worked mercilessly during the following winter, with 32,000 succumbing to starvation and related diseases. At the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, the plan was for captured Russians and Poles to be cut off from food and allowed to die; Jews were murdered. But as the labor shortage worsened, even the Jews were given an opportunity to work for the Third Reich. As many as 1.65 million concentration camp internees were put to work for Germany during the war years. Approximately 3/4 did not survive the war. While Germany enjoyed some of the lowest unemployment rates the world has ever seen, its economy boomed. Literally. The English...and then the Americans...were bombing the hell out of it. This too had a remarkably beneficial effect - at least from the point of view of a numbers-addled economist. Capacity utilization - a key measure of economic health - rose to almost impossible levels. Every factory. Every railway car. Everybody who could walk and every corner or every workplace was pressed into service of the war economy. Full capacity. Full employment. What was not to like? Statistically, the German economy in the '30s and early '40s was in rude health; but the health of the people who lived and worked in it deteriorated. They had less to eat, and less fuel for heat and transportation. Their houses were smaller, colder, more dilapidated...if they hadn't been destroyed completely. From the very beginning in 1933, the domestic economy was stripped in order to provide resources to the military. Food, housing, clothing all were soon rationed in order to prevent price inflation. Ration coupons for clothing, for example, helped cut demand. But nothing could boost supply, not when so many people and so much capital had been diverted to war. As the war intensified, of course, so did the shortages. The farms lacked labor and equipment. The factories were converted to supplying guns, uniforms and ammunition. And the houses were deteriorating or being destroyed. Allied bombers were overhead more and more frequently as the war went on. Americans had brought in thousands of Mustang fighter planes that were faster and more maneuverable than the Luftwaffe's planes. This made it possible to undertake massive daylight bombing raids. In terms of built-up demand, Germany's builders never had it so good. Domestic housing construction had peaked out in 1937. Five years later, there was hardly a house in the country that didn't need building...or rebuilding. A quarter of a million houses were damaged in the bombing of Hamburg alone. Trouble was there were no domestic builders to fix them; they had all been drawn into the war effort, along with everyone else. This left Germans with worse food, worse housing, and less income than they had before the Nazis took over. As early as 1941 - in the first years of the war - civilian consumption was already down 18% from 1938...and the collapse was just beginning. With so few workers and so many jobs, you'd expect a substantial increase in real incomes. But that presumes there is a freely- functioning labor market. In Germany, labor rates were controlled by the central planners, who had ideas of their own. And their main idea was to wring out as much of the wealth of the private sector as possible, so that it could be directed to the military industry. By war's end, there was little left. Putting aside the millions of dead and the bombed-out, ruined landscape of Germany, in purely economic terms the war was a catastrophe. In 1945, it was the Germans' turn to starve. In many urban areas, the daily calorie ration was no more than 1,000. Diseases linked to malnutrition were rampant. The birth weight of newborn babies was dangerously low. In terms of GDP per capita, Germany had wiped out 6 decades of progress. Not since 1880 had Germans lived with so little material output. But that assumes the GDP measured real, useful output. It did not. It measured primarily military output. The real living standards of the Germans were much lower than even these numbers reveal. But by then, the chief central planners were dead or in the custody of the Allies. It was horribly expensive and painful, but Germany had provided a good lesson. Germans were probably 'safe enough' in 1933. Perhaps the first few extra tanks and airplanes didn't hurt. They may have been useful. Maybe not. Perhaps they merely brought German security spending to the point of declining marginal utility. But then they continued and increased...above and beyond the point where diminishing returns become negative returns; that is, they soon brought Germany to the DOWNSIDE. More to come... Regards, Bill Bonner From the Archives... The Sharks Amongst the School Bernankonomics 101 There's Going To Be a Fight The World's #1 Money Printer The Video That Started All the Controversy
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