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• Gold recovers in Asia on decent demand
• Three King World News Blogs
• India bans gold jewellery from Thailand
• Gold, silver coins acceptable forms of payment?
• Could Gold ETF Outflows Drive ‘Vicious Circle of Selling?’
• Hedge Funds Have Never Been More Bullish Stocks (And Bearish Gold)
• Fear In Gold Market As Hedge Funds And Retail Sell – HNW And Smart Money Accumulate Again
• Paper Money Kaput? Gold rush on as Europe crisis deepens
• Gold Versus Gold Miners: Has The Time Come To Flip The Switch?
• Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Gold’s Death Cross is a buy signal for China
• Louis James...The Herd: Wrong About Alaska, Wrong About Gold
• Chinese entry to Gold ETF likely to impact price
• Adam Taggart: Gold's regular morning mugging
• Ted Butler: A Manipulation Timeline
• China loves the US dollar again as America roars back
• Nine King World News Blogs/Audio Interviews
• It Could be a Perfect Moment to Act Right Now: Louis James, Casey Research
• Ted Butler: Bullish on Gold But JP Morgan Excessively Short in Silver
• Audit of gold at New York Fed fails to cover leases and swaps
• Robert Wenzel: Get ready for some major disinformation about America's gold
• "Bloomberg" Gold Report Misses the Mark
• Gold Climbs From 6-Month Low in London; Platinum Advances
• Iran scolds world powers over gold sanctions "offer"
• Dr. Marc Faber: Bottom Forming in Gold
• Baubles to bars: India gold culture defies curbs
• Peter Grandich Laments Mining Industry's Obtuseness in Face of Price Suppression
• Retail consumers drive gold demand in India
• A Bottom and a Buy Signal: Gartman Shorts Gold
• January Gold Imports Into India Surge 23 Percent, Hit 18-Month High
• India mulling further efforts to curb gold imports
• World Gold Council to Teach Central Bankers How to Trade Gold
• Royal Mint to strike first gold coins in India for nearly 100 years
• Russia May Become No. 3 Gold Miner by 2015
• Shanghai Gold Exchange benchmark contract volume jumps to record
• Russian Policy Study Group Notes GATA's Exposure of Gold Price Suppression
• Putin Turns Black Gold Into Bullion as Russia Out-buys the World
• Stewart Thompson: Q.E. and gold revaluation
• Jim Rickards: Global Monetary System Headed for Collapse
• Matt Taibbi....Gangster Bankers: Too Big to Jail
• Doug Noland: Hedge Funds Gone Wild

Gold recovers in Asia on decent demand Posted: 22 Feb 2013 02:34 PM PST The gold price remains substantially down on the week following falls on Wednesday and early Thursday.

Three King World News Blogs Posted: 22 Feb 2013 01:13 PM PST Three King World News Blogs The first blog is with Dr. Stephen Leeb...and it's headlined "China Will Have World's Largest Gold Reserves in 2 to 3 Years". The next two blogs are with Dr. Marc Faber. Blog #1 is titled "It's a Disgrace to Think Money Printing Solves Problems"...and Blog #2 is headlined "This is How the Great Money Printing Experiment Will End".

India bans gold jewellery from Thailand Posted: 22 Feb 2013 01:13 PM PST India bans gold jewellery from Thailand In a fresh clampdown, India has officially banned the import of gold jewellery from Thailand. The government has announced that unless it is satisfied that gold jewellery imports from Thailand had received 20% value addition in that country, they would be banned. The authorities suspect that Indian importers are misusing the duty free pact with Thailand to import bullion from the South East Asian nation. The commerce ministry has recommended suspension of gold jewellery imports from Thailand in view of the increasing imports from the country. For some time now, the government has been looking to bring down imports of the precious metal into the country and has added several stages of import duties. This story, filed from Mumbai, was posted on the mineweb.com Internet site yesterday...and I thank Marshall Angeles for today's first gold-related story. The link is here.

Gold, silver coins acceptable forms of payment? Posted: 22 Feb 2013 01:13 PM PST Gold, silver coins acceptable forms of payment? Arizonans who fear the federal government will make their folding money worthless may soon be able to substitute privately minted gold and silver coins. The Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday took the first steps to making such coins legal tender in Arizona. Bill SB1439 would give them the same legal status as bills and coins authorized by Congress. Nothing in the proposal by Sen. Chester Crandell, R-Heber, would force anyone to actually accept these coins as payment for any debt. Their use would be voluntary. But proponents said it's only a matter of time before the country suffers hyperinflation, making the greenback worthless. This article appeared on the azdailysun.com Internet site yesterday...and I thank Elliot Simon for sending it our way. The link is here.

Could Gold ETF Outflows Drive ‘Vicious Circle of Selling?’ Posted: 22 Feb 2013 01:13 PM PST Could Gold ETF Outflows Drive 'Vicious Circle of Selling?' The largest gold ETF backed by physical bullion saw its largest one-day outflow in 18 months on Wednesday and fell 2.5% on speculation the Federal Reserve may ease back on economic stimulus. Bullion holdings in SPDR Gold Trust fell by 20.8 metric tons on Wednesday, the biggest one-day outflow since August 2011, Reuters reports. The ETF currently holds about 1,299 metric tons of gold valued at $66.3 billion. In terms of performance, the gold fund is down about 7% the past month. This "sky is falling" type story was posted on the ETFtrends.com Internet site yesterday...and was picked up by finance.yahoo.com...and I thank Scott Pluschau for sending it along. The link is here...and the embedded chart is definitely worth the trip. [But the chart for SLV certainly doesn't look like that. - Ed]

Hedge Funds Have Never Been More Bullish Stocks (And Bearish Gold) Posted: 22 Feb 2013 01:13 PM PST Hedge Funds Have Never Been More Bullish Stocks (And Bearish Gold) Across the universe of hedge funds that Goldman Sachs covers, the net long exposure to the market reached a record-breaking 52% in Q4 2012 - the most bullish level on record. It would appear, that the 2-and-20 crowd of alpha generators have merely been corralled into beta-chasers as, just as they did in the run-up to the 2007/8 highs, their exposure is mirroring the broad market performance. It strikes us that a 'hedge' fund should, in general, be contrarily reducing exposure as the market rises but with turnover of all positions also at record lows it would appear the managers have set out their chips and are all holding on - as the reality of relative returns (in a fickle investing environment) trump absolute returns. Despite low turnover, hedge funds notably reduced holdings of underperforming long-time favorites Apple and gold (lowest holdings since the crisis began) while raising allocations to rallying Financials. Seems like déjà vu to us? This short Zero Hedge piece from yesterday, complete with a couple of excellent charts, is worth running through. I thank Ulrike Marx for her final offering in today's column...and the link is here.

Fear In Gold Market As Hedge Funds And Retail Sell – HNW And Smart Money Accumulate Again Posted: 22 Feb 2013 01:13 PM PST Fear In Gold Market As Hedge Funds And Retail Sell – HNW And Smart Money Accumulate Again Gold has come under pressure from heavy liquidation by hedge funds and banks on the COMEX this week. The unusual and often 'not for profit' nature of the selling, at the same time every day this week, has again led to suspicions of market manipulation. Short sellers, technical and momentum traders have the upper hand and are pressing their advantage with momentum and sentiment on their side. Nervous longs are being stopped out through stop loss orders and concerns regarding the clear downward short term trend. Gold's so called 'death cross' scare is simplistic, bogus nonsense that should be ignored by all. Gold experienced a 'death cross' in April 2012 (see gold chart above) and similar alarmist analysis was put forward about the death of the gold bull market and the likelihood of a 1980 style plunge. This did not come to pass, nor will it come to pass now given the real world fundamentals driving the gold market. This Goldcore commentary from yesterday was posted on the zerohedge.com Internet site...and is a must read for all discouraged bulls. I thank Marshall Angeles for sending it along...and the link is here.

Paper Money Kaput? Gold rush on as Europe crisis deepens Posted: 22 Feb 2013 01:13 PM PST Paper Money Kaput? Gold rush on as Europe crisis deepens It used to be the main exchange currency in Europe, but soon after WW1 governments ditched it. Now, amid turbulent financial times and economic woes, gold is fashionable once more, as RT's Peter Oliver explains. This 2-minute Russia Today video was posted on the youtube.com Internet site yesterday...and my thanks go out to Matthew Nel for bringing it to my attention...and now to yours. It's worth watching...and the link is here.

Gold Versus Gold Miners: Has The Time Come To Flip The Switch? Posted: 22 Feb 2013 01:13 PM PST Gold Versus Gold Miners: Has The Time Come To Flip The Switch? Last October, among the various statements by Hugh Hendry at the annual Buttonwood gathering was this blurb by the man who is otherwise a big fan of physical gold: "I am long gold and I am short gold mining equities. There is no rationale for owning gold mining equities. It is as close as you get to insanity. The risk premium goes up when the gold price goes up. Societies are more envious of your gold at $3000 than at $300." Vivid imagery aside, he was spot on as the GDX tumbled 30% since then. Yet with the gold miners now universally abhorred and hated by virtually everyone, has the time come to take advantage of the capitulation? This commentary posted over at the Zero Hedge website yesterday is also worth your time if you have it...and I thank Elliot Simon for his final contribution to today's column. The link is here.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Gold’s Death Cross is a buy signal for China Posted: 22 Feb 2013 01:13 PM PST Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: Gold's Death Cross is a buy signal for China It is a treacherous moment for gold bugs. The first whiff of future tightening from the US Federal Reserve has sent bullion into a nose-dive, triggering a much-feared "Death's Cross" sell signal on gold futures. Gold has dropped by over $100 an ounce in ten days, touching $1556 this morning. The HUI index of gold mining stocks broke down weeks ago – as so often leading gold itself by a few weeks – and has already crashed to levels last seen in 2009. Citigroup says the great bull market of the last 12 years is over. The "long cycle" has peaked. Economic recovery has yanked away the key support. So long as there are no big "street riots" this year, investors will stop buying precious metals as Armageddon insurance and rotate instead into stocks that generate income. Such at least is the argument. This blog from Ambrose was posted on The Telegraph's website sometime yesterday...and I thank Paul Laviers for sending it to me in the wee hours of this morning. The link is here.

Louis James...The Herd: Wrong About Alaska, Wrong About Gold Posted: 22 Feb 2013 01:13 PM PST Louis James...The Herd: Wrong About Alaska, Wrong About Gold My message lately has been very simple: buy low. And do it now. The essential formula for investing, as you know, is to buy low and sell high. So easy to say, so hard to do. It takes real mettle to be a successful contrarian, and it's precisely because so many investors are so nervous about our market today that it's a buyer's market. This must read commentary by Louis was posted on the Casey Research website yesterday...and the link is here.

Chinese entry to Gold ETF likely to impact price Posted: 22 Feb 2013 01:13 PM PST Chinese entry to Gold ETF likely to impact price China's Gold ETF launch will be a major boost to gold but it's linking to Shanghai exchange price, rather than the London bullion price that other gold ETFs employ elsewhere might create some confusion. Analysts said there could be uncertainties in global markets once Chinese ETF's arrived as loyal Chinese foreign investors would switch to their own Gold ETF which might create an impact on the prices. Chinese investors at present didn't have an access to one of their own while Hong Kong investors have access to three gold ETFs, Japan and Singapore have two and one product respectively. This short article was posted on the bullionstreet.com Internet site during the lunch hour India Standard Time yesterday...and I thank Marshall Angeles for sending it along. The link is here.

Adam Taggart: Gold's regular morning mugging Posted: 22 Feb 2013 01:13 PM PST Adam Taggart: Gold's regular morning mugging Adam Taggart, colleague of market analyst Chris Martenson at the Peak Prosperity Internet site, today notes with some wonderfully annotated charts what he calls "Gold's Regular Morning Mugging" on the New York Commodities Exchange. Of course this mugging was noted long ago by GATA consultant Dimitri Speck and the late GATA board member Adrian Douglas, who found that despite its great run up over the last decade gold almost always has gone down during Western market hours...and Taggart draws conclusions similar to theirs. "It's hard to swallow that these charts are evidence of a free and efficient market," Taggart writes. "Otherwise, a pattern this predictable would be quickly removed as traders and HFT algos piled in to a 'sure' bet. Well, dear reader, these chart patterns in gold [and silver] were created by high-frequency traders in the first place...and it's been going on in one form or another for decades. Mr. Taggart is rather late to this party. All of this and more was posted in a GATA release yesterday...and the link is here.

Ted Butler: A Manipulation Timeline Posted: 22 Feb 2013 01:13 PM PST Ted Butler: A Manipulation Timeline "While the commercials learned to behave collusively when dealing with the technical funds, there was an additional requirement that there would be one large commercial standing ready to be the short seller of last resort to backstop the combined commercial effort. Without a "Mr. Big" standing behind and guaranteeing that the combined commercial effort to trick the technical funds would never get overpowered, the long term silver manipulation would not have been possible. Over the past 30 years, there have been a series of Mr. Big's that have been the paper silver short sellers of last resort. Therefore, the history of the silver manipulation can be recorded along the lines of who was the big short seller at any particular time." This commentary by Ted Butler is from November 2012...and one of his few offerings that's been posted in the public domain over the last few years...but it's more than timely considering the engineered price declines we've had in all four precious metals over the last ten days. I posted it in this column when it first came out...and if you've read it before, it's definitely worth another look. It's posted over at the silverseek.com Internet site...and I consider it a must read. The link is here.

China loves the US dollar again as America roars back Posted: 22 Feb 2013 01:13 PM PST China loves the US dollar again as America roars back Jin Zhongxia, head of the central bank's research institute, said America's energy revolution and export revival had shaken up the global landscape and would lead to a stronger dollar over time. "The dollar's global dominance will continue," he said. Dr Jin said the world was moving to a "1+4" system, with the greenback serving as the anchor of global payments, supplemented by "four smaller reserve currencies" – the euro, sterling, yen and yuan. "Compared with the euro area, the dollar zone has much greater resilience to shocks. The debt crisis in the euro area has demonstrated the structural weakness of this currency," he wrote in a paper for the February bulletin of the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard sounds euphoric in this piece from The Telegraph early yesterday evening, but if I were him, I wouldn't be breaking out the party favours too soon. I thank Ulrike Marx for our first story of the day...and the link is here.

Nine King World News Blogs/Audio Interviews Posted: 22 Feb 2013 01:13 PM PST Nine King World News Blogs/Audio Interviews The first blog is with Bill Fleckenstein...and it's headlined "When Gold Turns, it Will Trade Violently to the Upside". Next comes Dan Norcini and Bill Haynes: "One Huge Gold Buyer and Hedge Fund Moves". The third blog is with Michael Pento...and it's entitled "The Antidote For Reckless Governments and Money Printing". The next blog is with James Turk. It bears the headline "Central Planners are About to Completely Lose Control". The next blog is also with James Turk..."So-Called Audit of Fed's Gold Complete Rubbish and Propaganda"...and the third James Turk blog in a row is titled "U.S. Treasury Enters the Gold War". And lastly is Robert Fitzwilson...and it's headlined "Unlimited Fiat Under Guise of Currency Wars Sweeping Planet". The first audio interview is with Egon von Greyerz...and the second audio inteview is with Bill Fleckenstein.

It Could be a Perfect Moment to Act Right Now: Louis James, Casey Research Posted: 22 Feb 2013 01:13 PM PST It Could be a Perfect Moment to Act Right Now: Louis James, Casey Research Louis James, Chief Metals & Mining Investment Strategist of Casey Research, explains why he see a window of opportunity right now in the gold and silver mining space of what could be "a perfect moment with those that have the guts to act". Louis also got company-specific in this interview as we talked about two stories in particular. Louis gave his opinions about one of his Top Picks right now, Atna Resources...as well as on Minco Silver. Gecko Research recently made a site visit to Minco's Fuwan Project. We also touched a bit on the current bid on Orko Silver by both First Majestic and Coeur d'Alene. The higher bid by Coeur came as a surprise to Louis. This 26 minute audio interview with Louis was posted on the geckoresearch.com Internet site on Saturday...and the link is here.

Ted Butler: Bullish on Gold But JP Morgan Excessively Short in Silver Posted: 22 Feb 2013 01:13 PM PST Ted Butler: Bullish on Gold But JP Morgan Excessively Short in Silver "The good news is that the deliberate price smash appears to have fulfilled its objective, namely, to allow the commercials to buy great quantities of COMEX gold and silver contracts. When the commercials buy all they can shake from the tree, a price bottom is formed. The bad news is the blatant nature of the deliberate price smash, which confirms that a market manipulation exists for which a specific federal agency was expressly created to prevent. "Whereas gold's COT structure in undeniably bullish on historical measurements, silver is a long way from what would be considered flat-out bullish (as is the case in gold). There is a single factor underlying this difference – JPMorgan. This must read excerpt from Ted Butler's Weekend Review to his paying subscribers was posted on the goldsilverworld.com Internet site on Sunday...and the link is here.

Audit of gold at New York Fed fails to cover leases and swaps Posted: 22 Feb 2013 01:13 PM PST Audit of gold at New York Fed fails to cover leases and swaps The U.S. government's gold in New York is safe in a vault underneath Manhattan, and some of the precious metal there is purer than previously thought. That's according to a first-ever audit conducted last year by the Treasury Department of U.S. gold on deposit at Federal Reserve banks in New York and elsewhere. As part of the audit, the Treasury tested a sample of the government's 34,021 gold bars in the New York Fed's vault five stories below Manhattan's financial district, according to the inspector general's office. Auditors drilled tiny holes into the bars to remove samples that were tested for fineness in a process called assaying. As Chris Powell stated in the GATA release where I found this L.A. Times Story..."Multiple claims to the same metal are far more important than any possible imperfections in particular bars." Chris would be right about that. The link is here.

Robert Wenzel: Get ready for some major disinformation about America's gold Posted: 22 Feb 2013 01:13 PM PST Robert Wenzel: Get ready for some major disinformation about America's gold Robert Wenzel, editor of Economic Policy Journal, today notes the phoniness and irrelevance of the audit supposedly undertaken recently of gold at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, reported today by the Los Angeles Times in the story posted above this one. "This audit was designed to confuse," Wenzel writes. "Expect more stories about how the Treasury Department conducted an audit of U.S. gold. Not true. Gold at Fort Knox, where America's gold supposedly sits, is off-limits to all and has never been audited." Wenzel's commentary, which I found in another GATA release on Monday, is headlined "Get Ready for Some Major Disinformation about America's Gold"...and it's posted at Economic Policy Journal here.

"Bloomberg" Gold Report Misses the Mark Posted: 22 Feb 2013 01:13 PM PST "Bloomberg" Gold Report Misses the Mark We read political and economic news reports like any investors does, but we also look for source data ourselves on important subjects. It's fine to let reporters gather information for us, but what we do with that information, and what happens if we trust it blindly, is our own responsibility. There are risks. A case in point is the recent Bloomberg report that Russia has become the world's biggest gold buyer. That may be true according to current official numbers, but official numbers are not always accurate - and in China's case, they have not been updated since 2009. So, BIG GOLD Editor Jeff Clark did a little thinking and research of his own on the subject, coming to a strikingly different conclusion than Bloomberg reached. Now, we like the Bloomberg team, and think they do an above average job - and their numbers may even be officially right - but that doesn't make the picture they painted with them accurate. This introduction to yesterday's edition of the Casey Daily Dispatch was written by Louis James...and posted on the CR website on Monday afternoon. It's worth reading...and the link is here.

Gold Climbs From 6-Month Low in London; Platinum Advances Posted: 22 Feb 2013 01:13 PM PST Gold Climbs From 6-Month Low in London; Platinum Advances Gold swung between gains and losses near a six-month low as investors weighed signs of improving economic growth against speculation that the biggest weekly drop since May will spur purchases. Platinum rose as rubber bullets were used in a clash at an Anglo American Platinum Ltd. mine. Bullion dropped 3.4 percent last week and holdings in gold- backed exchange-traded products fell the most since July in the period on growing confidence that the global economy is strengthening. Billionaire investor George Soros cut his gold ETP holdings last quarter, government filings showed last week. UBS AG said in a report today that its gold flows to India, the top buyer, were above average after the sell-off, and Morgan Stanley said it expects "bargain hunting" this week. "In the face of increasingly positive economic data and good stock market yields, the zero returns of gold and silver are looking more and more unattractive," David Govett, head of precious metals at Marex Spectron Group in London, wrote in a report today. "Gold has been meandering aimlessly for a while now and needed a move one way or the other to wash out a lot of stale positions. We have seen the return of the Asian market and some physical buying, albeit light." The garbage that passes for news these days. This Bloomberg story was filed from London very early on Monday morning GMT...and posted on their website mid-morning Mountain time. I thank Elliot Simon for sending it...and the link is here.

Iran scolds world powers over gold sanctions "offer" Posted: 22 Feb 2013 01:13 PM PST Iran scolds world powers over gold sanctions "offer" Iran criticized on Monday a reported plan by major powers to demand the closure of a uranium enrichment plant in return for an easing of sanctions on Tehran's trade in gold and other precious metals, Iranian media reported. The Islamic Republic, which says its nuclear program is peaceful, started building the Fordow plant inside a mountain in secret as early as 2006, to protect it from air strikes. Last week Reuters reported world powers were planning to offer to ease sanctions barring trade in gold and other precious metals with Iran in return for steps to shut down Fordow. This Reuters piece was filed from Dubai on Monday...and posted on their website early in New York early on that day as well. I thank Marshall Angeles for sharing it with us...and the link is here.

Dr. Marc Faber: Bottom Forming in Gold Posted: 22 Feb 2013 01:13 PM PST "In Thursday's Far East trading, new low price prices for this move down were set in all four precious metals" ¤ Yesterday In Gold & Silver All was quiet in Far East trading right up until 3:00 p.m. in Hong Kong. At that point, the gold price developed a slight negative bias...and shortly after the London morning gold fix was in, the high-frequency traders went to work. The rest, as they say, is history. Then right at 2:00 p.m. in New York...probably on the Fed news...the bid disappeared and the gold price plunged another $20 in electronic trading. Gold's low price tick [$1,558.00 spot] came minutes before 3:00 p.m. in New York...and after that it traded sideways until the 5:15 p.m. Eastern time close. When the smoke cleared, gold finished the Wednesday trading session at $1,564.30 spot...down $40.30 on the day. Volume was immense...around 276,000 contracts. Silver followed a similar path, but the price was basically unchanged through all of Far East trading...and right up until shortly before 11:00 a.m. in London, the same time as the high-frequency traders showed up in gold. Silver's low [$29.21 spot] came at the same moment as gold's...but recovered 35 cents going into the close of electronic trading. For the second day in a row, silver had an intraday price decline of over a dollar. Yesterday, it was $1.23. Silver finished the Wednesday trading day at $28.56 spot...down 88 cents. Net volume was very healthy at 58,500 contracts. Gross volume was north of 138,000 contracts. And, for the second day running, both platinum and palladium traded in a far different price pattern than did gold and silver...but both got smoked to the downside as well. As I pointed out a couple of weeks back when the monthly Bank Participation Report came out...two or three U.S. bullion banks had been going short against all comers during the platinum and palladium rallies that had begun several months prior...and yesterday was the first day that they did the real dirty in those two precious metals...and rang the cash register on them as well. The dollar index opened at 80.51 on Wednesday morning in the Far East...and faded down to 80.28 around 3:00 p.m. in Hong Kong...and less than an hour before the London open. From there, the dollar began to rally...and by 2:00 p.m. in New York it had made it up to about 80.81...and then jumped up to 81.10 following the Fed news. From there it traded sideways into the close, finishing the Wednesday trading session at 81.05...up 54 basis points from Tuesday's close. The dollar index rally was well under way before the high-frequency traders showed up in London just after the morning gold fix, so to hang yesterday's precious metals price action entirely on the currencies, is a stretch...and that's being kind. It's my opinion that this was a manufactured rally so 'da boyz' could hide behind this fig leaf as they did the dirty in the precious metals...and that's certainly not the first time the've used this technique. The gold stocks got crushed...and the HUI closed on its absolute low of the day...down 4.97%. Except for a couple of silver stocks...mostly notably First Majestic Silver...Nick Laird's Intraday Silver Sentiment Index got hammered to the tune of 5.13%. (Click on image to enlarge) The CME's Daily Delivery Report showed that 22 gold and 8 silver contracts were posted for delivery on Friday within the Comex-approved depositories. It was mostly the 'usual suspects' as issuers and stoppers...and the link to that activity, such as it was, is here. The GLD ETF showed a huge decline yesterday, as at least one authorized participant withdrew a total of 667,796 troy ounces of gold. I was expecting the worst when I clicked on the link to SLV, but was amazed to discover that an authorized participant added 580,078 troy ounces of silver! Is someone covering a short position? Since the big engineered price decline began on Monday, February 10th, SLV has had 1.45 million ounces added to it...and GLD has had 890,000 ounces withdrawn. After I hit the 'send' button on today's column, the good folks over at Switzerland's Zürcher Kantonalbank sent out their latest update early this morning. As of the close of business on February 19th, they reported that their gold ETF declined by 47,805 troy ounces during the reporting period that began on February 12th...and there was virtually no change in their silver ETF. The U.S. Mint had a sales report of sorts yesterday. They didn't sell any gold eagles or buffaloes...but did report selling another 424,500 silver eagles. Over at the Comex-approved depositories on Tuesday, they reported receiving 352,093 troy ounces of silver...and shipped 845,166 troy ounces out the door. The link to that activity is here. I'm back to the usual number of stories for a mid-week column, so I hope you can find the time to read the articles that interest you the most. ¤ Critical Reads Fed, uneasy over 'QE'...plans bond-buy debate Minutes of the Federal Reserve's January meeting released Wednesday reveal that many Fed officials are worried about the costs and risks arising from the $85 billion–per–month asset-purchase program. And they all seem to have their own ideas on how to proceed. Several Fed officials said the central bank should be prepared to vary the pace of the asset-purchase plan depending on the outlook or how the program was working. One wanted to vary it on a meeting-by-meeting basis. One new idea backed by a "number" of Fed officials would have the central bank promising markets that it will not sell its massive holdings of Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities as quickly as the market now expects. This could be a substitute for asset purchases, they argued. Say what? You can't make this stuff up. Today's first story was posted on the marketwatch.com Internet site shortly after the markets closed in New York yesterday afternoon...and I thank Casey Research's own Dennis Miller for sending it our way. The link is here. U.S. Banks Bigger Than GDP as Accounting Rift Masks Risk Warning: Banks in the U.S. are bigger than they appear. That label, like a similar one on automobile side-view mirrors, might be required of the four largest U.S. lenders if Thomas Hoenig, vice chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., has his way. Applying stricter accounting standards for derivatives and off-balance-sheet assets would make the banks twice as big as they say they are -- or about the size of the U.S. economy -- according to data compiled by Bloomberg. "Derivatives, like loans, carry risk," Hoenig said in an interview. "To recognize those bets on the balance sheet would give a better picture of the risk exposures that are there." This Bloomberg article appeared on their website late Tuesday afternoon..and I thank Manitoba reader Ulrike Marx for bringing it to our attention...and the link is here. Matt Taibbi: Justice Department's New Get-Tough Policy Is, Well, Not I don't want to sound like a broken record, but . . . the latest ploy by the government to insist it is "getting tough" on Wall Street is beyond laughable. The tough new-and-improved regime, as described by the curiously credulous Dealbook, is a policy of extracting criminal guilty pleas from foreign subsidiaries, as opposed to the "usual fines and reforms." This was the path chosen in the recent UBS deal (in which a Japanese subsidiary was charged while the parent company was given a complete walk, a non-prosecution settlement) and in the more recent deal with the Royal Bank of Scotland. Both of those banks were implicated in the LIBOR rate-fixing case, which is only maybe the most egregious and far-reaching financial scandal of our generation. You know what an effective deterrent to crime is? Jail! And do you know what kind of criminal penalty actually makes people think twice about committing crimes the next time? The kind that actually comes out of some individual's pocket, not fines that come out of the corporate kitty. Matt goes supernova on this one. His blog is not overly long...and definitely worth reading if you have the time. It was posted on the rollingstone.com Internet site yesterday...and I thank Roy Stephens for his first of many contributions to today's column. The link is here. Global banks shun U.K. Gilts on 'stagflation' risk A clutch of global banks and funds have warned clients to steer clear of UK Gilts, fearing that the Bank of England has opened the door to "stagflation" and risks losing credibility. "Systematically forecasting a disinflation that never materialises has exposed the bank to ridicule," said Nomura, Japan's biggest lender and a conduit for Asian investors. Nomura said the Bank's refusal to check inflation running at 2.7pc validates suspicions that it is "actively seeking to inflate away debts. It seems the Bank of England may be taking the dubious path of ignoring stated targets when they prove problematic. Markets are becoming less forgiving," it said. I do believe that this is an example of the pot calling the kettle, black. This Ambrose Evans Pritchard offering was posted on The Telegraph's website early yesterday evening GMT...and I thank Ulrike Marx for her second offering in today's column. The link is here. Spain's 'head is out of the water' as deficit drops below 7pc Mariano Rajoy has declared that "Spain's head is out of the water" as he revealed that austerity efforts have pulled the budget deficit for 2012 below 7pc of GDP. The Spanish prime minister, who was delivering his State of the Nation address to the parliament in Madrid, said it was a "readjustment without precedent". In 2011, the Spanish deficit was 9.4pc of GDP. He said the results would end speculation about Spain crashing out of the eurozone. "A year ago, nobody looking at Spain from outside would bet on it," Mr Rajoy said. "Today, no one would say we could leave the euro." However gloom was cast over Spain's break-through by the Euroframe Group that warned that eurozone GDP is likely to fall by 0.3pc this year. One data point does not a recovery make. This is whistling past the graveyard, Spanish style. The story was posted on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site late yesterday afternoon GMT...and it's courtesy of Roy Stephens. The link is here. Spain and Italy: The Euro Crisis Gnaws at Europe's Underbelly The euro crisis may have dropped out of the headlines recently, but Spain and Italy would seem to be doing their best to bring it back. Real estate giant Reyal Urbis' bankruptcy has raised fresh concerns about Spanish banks and many fear that a Berlusconi election victory could drive Rome to seek emergency aid. It had become a trend among top European politicians to forecast that the worst of the euro crisis had passed. A pledge by the European Central Bank to buy up unlimited quantities of sovereign bonds as needed, promising numbers from Greece indicating that the country was finally getting its budget deficit under control and a reform-minded government in Rome -- 2012 seemed set to go down in history as the year the crisis lost its bite. This week, the outlook is looking less rosy. And much of the pessimism is focused on the two countries long seen as potentially the most dangerous should the euro crisis grow: Spain and Italy. In light of what's in this article, it's hard to take the prior story about Spain's 'success' seriously. This was posted on the German website spiegel.de yesterday...and is another Roy Stephens offering. The link is here. Berlusconi's Faithful: 'Only Silvio Can Save Italy' Comparisons to Jesus, professions of love: Supporters of Silvio Berlusconi are rabidly faithful. As the campaign winds down ahead of elections in Italy, the rhetoric has heated up. For those who deify "Il Cavaliere," the Germans are to blame for their country's woes. The savior is making the crowd wait and Giovanni Ferrante briefly lost his faith. "Where the devil is Berlusconi hiding," he says. He's been waiting for more than an hour in a stuffy crowded hall, with narrow seats. Just then the party anthem starts playing and the star marches into the theater in Palermo, shaking hands, winking and grinning. Even those in the highest seats can see the gleam reflecting off of his unnaturally white teeth. Ferrante waves back. Il Cavaliere has finally arrived. Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's scandal-plagued former prime minister, is back. Just days before Italians are set to go to the polls on Sunday and Monday, he and his party are narrowing the once sizeable lead enjoyed by center-left candidate Pier Luigi Bersani. Just how narrow that lead now is cannot be known for sure; no new survey numbers can be published in the two weeks before Italian elections. At least they're not screaming "Il Duce"...not yet, anyway. This is another story from the spiegel.de Internet site yesterday afternoon Europe time...and the articles from Roy just keep on coming. The link is here. Bulgaria succumbs to euro deflation curse Another euro-pegged government defending an overvalued exchange rate bites the dust, a reminder that the underlying economic and social disaster across the Europe's Arc of Depression is still getting worse. Bulgarian prime minister Boiko Borisov resigned this morning after days of mass protests against austerity across the country. "I will not participate in a government under which police are beating people. Every drop of blood is a shame for us," he said. "Our power was handed to us by the people, today we are handing it back to them." This must read Ambrose Evans-Pritchard blog was posted on The Telegraph's website sometime yesterday...and it's courtesy of Roy Stephens once again. The link is here. Greece hit by fresh anti-austerity strike Greece was hit by a fresh strike on Wednesday called by leading unions against unrelenting austerity in the recession-weary nation ahead of an audit by international creditors, disrupting flights, ferries and hospital services. The radical leftist party Syriza, which heads the opposition, wants to use the strike as a springboard to topple the brittle coalition government of conservative Prime Minister Antonis Samaras. The strike -- the first general work stoppage in debt-crippled Greece this year -- has forced airport authorities to scrap or reschedule dozens of flights while hospitals were operating on reduced staffing. This story appeared on the france24.com Internet site yesterday...and I thank Roy S. once again. The link is here. 'Greece becoming third world country - economically and democratically' As Greece struggles to pay back overwhelming amounts of bailout loans, journalist and documentary maker Aris Chatzistefanou says the country is facing an even bigger issue. "When you have huge debt like the one that Greece and other countries in the European periphery are facing, you start losing levels of democracy and I'm afraid that has happened," he told RT. Many progressive economists have said for the last two or three years that these austerity measures will create not only social genocide in Greece, but they will destroy the infrastructure of the economy. And now we are talking about debt that is still increasing after three austerity packages. And if everything goes as planned, we will have a debt of 175 per cent of GDP. Don't forget that before the IMF and the troika intervention in Greece, we had a debt of 115 per cent. So it's exactly these austerity measures that create the problem. There are many alternative plans for example, default, because everyone knows that right now it's impossible to repay a huge debt like that – even if we accept that it's legal. And many people say that it's not legal. That it's illegal. Many other economists have spoken about exiting the eurozone. Even Paul Krugman has characterized the eurozone as a straightjacket for Greece which created this huge debt to the economy. This short article appeared on the Russia Today website on Wednesday...and I thank Roy for sending it. The link is here. E.U. deal on eurozone rules after MEPs back down on debt fund EU lawmakers reached a deal on tightening the eurozone's economic governance rules on Wednesday (20 February), after MEPs conceded defeat on the swift creation of a fund to pool sovereign debt. The deal, which has to be signed off by governments before a final vote in Parliament next month, tightens the EU-level scrutiny of national budgets. Eurozone countries will now be required to submit their budget plans to the European Commission and euro finance ministers to ensure that their proposals will keep to the eurozone's debt and deficit limits. This piece showed up on the euobserver.com Internet site early yesterday evening Europe time...and it's Roy Stephens final offering in today's column. The link is here. Three King World News Blogs The first blog is with Kevin Wides...and it's entitled "Despite the Smash, Big Picture for Gold Points to New Highs". Next is this interview with Ron Rosen. It's headlined "The Chart That Tells You All You Need to Know About Gold". The last blog is with Marc Faber...and bears the title "Bottom Forming in Gold, But Global Stock Markets Shaky". Armed robbers steal €3m in jewels from Paris store Two armed thieves in bullet-proof vests made off with three million euros worth of jewellery from an up-market department store in central Paris on Tuesday evening, just 24 hours after a gang seized €37m in diamonds from Brussels airport. The men approached the concession at around 6:45 p.m., about an hour before the store was due to close, and asked a salesperson to unlock the display cases at the South African boutique. They then emptied the contents of two cases and left by a staircase at the rear of the building. This article was posted on the france24.com Internet site yesterday...and I thank Roy Stephens for sending it. The link is here. Minting Coins Cost U.S. Taxpayers $436 Million: Chart of the Day Pennies and nickels have cost more than their face value to mint since 2006, resulting in a loss of at least $436 million to U.S. taxpayers. The chart of the day shows that in 2012, the penny cost almost 2 cents to make and the nickel more than 10 cents, according to the U.S. Mint's annual report released in January. Those prices have almost doubled over the past seven years. And you thought that there was no inflation! It's even showing up at the U.S. Mint. This short Bloomberg story, with two excellent charts, is worth a quick look...and I thank West Virginia reader Elliot Simon for bringing it to my attention...and now to yours. The link is here. Dr. Dave Janda interviews GATA chairman Bill Murphy This interview with Bill took place on Sunday afternoon over at all-talk radio WAAM 1600 out of Ann Arbor, Michigan. It runs for about 25 minutes...and the link is here. Please note that the mp3 file takes a while to load. Chinese entry to Gold ETF likely to impact price China's Gold ETF launch will be a major boost to gold but it's linking to Shanghai exchange price, rather than the London bullion price that other gold ETFs employ elsewhere might create some confusion. Analysts said there could be uncertainties in global markets once Chinese ETF's arrived as loyal Chinese foreign investors would switch to their own Gold ETF which might create an impact on the prices. Chinese investors at present didn't have an access to one of their own while Hong Kong investors have access to three gold ETFs, Japan and Singapore have two and one product respectively. This short article was posted on the bullionstreet.com Internet site during the lunch hour India Standard Time yesterday...and I thank Marshall Angeles for sending it along. The link is here. Adam Taggart: Gold's regular morning mugging Adam Taggart, colleague of market analyst Chris Martenson at the Peak Prosperity Internet site, today notes with some wonderfully annotated charts what he calls "Gold's Regular Morning Mugging" on the New York Commodities Exchange. Of course this m

Baubles to bars: India gold culture defies curbs Posted: 22 Feb 2013 01:13 PM PST Baubles to bars: India gold culture defies curbs India's steep new tax on gold imports doesn't deter Mousumi Rao as she holds up a glittering $5,000 filigree necklace that could adorn her daughter on her wedding day. Ms Rao's daughter isn't getting married next month or even next year. The 12-year-old is at least several years away from her wedding. Since tradition demands a bride practically drip with gold jewelry, it's never too early for an Indian family to start preparing, particularly with the high cost of gold these days. "I'm collecting things for her now so when she grows older and marries, I should have enough gold for her," said Ms Rao. "It is very auspicious for us, one of the most auspicious things, to give gold to your daughter." This AP story, filed from Mumbai, was posted on the New Delhi Television website yesterday evening India Standard Time. It's courtesy of Ulrike Marx...and the link is here.

Peter Grandich Laments Mining Industry's Obtuseness in Face of Price Suppression Posted: 22 Feb 2013 01:13 PM PST "Will JPMorgan et al go short the subsequent rallies in the precious metals whenever they commence?" ¤ Yesterday In Gold & Silver With the U.S. shut tight for President's Day on Monday, there wasn't much price activity in gold that day...and that sideways price activity continued into Tuesday in the Far East. The engineered sell-off began in London trading on their Tuesday morning, about twenty minutes before the Comex opened, and the low price tick of $1,599.90 spot came about 12:10 p.m. in New York. The subsequent rally wasn't allowed to get far...and got sold off a bit going into the 1:30 p.m. Eastern time Comex close, before trading sideways for the rest of the electronic session. The gold price finished the Tuesday session at $1,604.60 spot...down $5.20 on the day. The CME's gross volume figures for Monday and Tuesday combined were reported as 243,133 contracts, which was pretty chunky. It should be obvious to anyone with two synapse to rub together that JPMorgan et al were after silver yesterday...as it had another dollar plus intraday price move. Silver traded mostly unchanged during Monday trading...and much the same can be said for Tuesday. The high tick in London appeared to come at an early silver fix...just before noon GMT...and the sell-off began minutes after 1:00 p.m. in London...and about twenty minutes before the Comex opened. When the engineered price decline was done for the day at 12:10 p.m. in New York, silver's low price tick checked in at $29.13 spot. The high tick was recorded as $30.16 spot. Then, like gold, silver rallied a bit going into the Comex close before trading sideways for the rest of the day. Silver closed at $29.44 spot...down 54 cents. Silver's gross volume for Monday and Tuesday was 97,975 contracts...but with the roll-overs out of the March contract netted out, the volume dropped down to 53,667 which is still pretty huge. The platinum and palladium price action looked like they were on a different planet. The dollar index closed on Friday at 80.48...and rallied to around 80.72 in early Far East trading on their Monday morning, before chopping around the 80.65 mark throughout the rest of the day. This state of affairs lasted until 1:00 p.m. in London...8:00 a.m. in New York on Tuesday morning...about the same time as the sell-offs began in gold and silver. The low, such as it was, came around 1:10 p.m. Eastern time...and then didn't do much after that, closing on Tuesday at 80.51...virtually unchanged from Friday's close. Once again there was no correlation between the currencies and the precious metal price action. The gold stocks gapped down at the open, hitting their nadir at gold's 12:10 p.m. low. After that, the shares followed the gold price around like a shadow...and the HUI closed down another 1.12%. It was virtually the same story...and same chart pattern for silver...and Nick Laird's Intraday Silver Sentiment Index closed down 1.96%. (Click on image to enlarge) The CME's Daily Delivery Report showed that 41 gold and 57 silver contracts were posted for delivery tomorrow within the Comex-approved depositories. JPMorgan was the only short/issuer in gold..and the two long/stoppers were Deutsche Bank and HSBC USA. In silver, Jefferies was the short/issuer again on all 57 contracts...and Canada's own Bank of Nova Scotia stopped 55 of those contracts. So far this month, there have been 11,268 gold contracts posted for delivery, along with a rather impressive 440 silver contracts, which is quite high for a non-delivery month...and the month is only half over. The link to yesterday's Issuers and Stoppers Report is here. GLD showed another decline, as an authorized participant withdrew 96,784 troy ounces of gold...and as of 9:53 p.m. on Tuesday evening, there were no reported changes in SLV. The U.S. Mint had a decent sales report yesterday. They sold 9,000 ounces of gold eagles...4,500 one-ounce 24K gold buffaloes...and 454,500 silver eagles. Friday was a big day over at the Comex-approved depositories, as they reported receiving 1,551,167 troy ounces of silver...and shipped only 278,003 troy ounces of the stuff out the door. the link to that activity is here. Nick Laird and I were discussing Russia's gold reserves vs. their production over the last ten years or so...and although I haven't seen a chart yet, what Nick had to say was rather interesting. "Checking the numbers on Russia's production - since 1930 - they have produced 505 million ounces of gold." "Yet their central bank is only holding 30 million ounces or 1/17th of their countries production." "In the last twelve years they have produced 59 million ounces...and the Gov't has kept 17.3 million ounces." "So the Russian Government is not as hungry as the Chinese Government." My comment to Nick was that maybe the Russian government wasn't reporting everything that they were puting into reserves, just like the Chinese weren't. We'll find out in the fullness of time, I supposed. Here are a couple of charts that I received from Washington state reader S.A. over the last couple of days...and neither require any further emellishment from me... (Click on image to enlarge) Here's a chart that I stole out of a Frank Holmes commentary that someone sent me on the weekend, but I can't remember who. (Click on image to enlarge) Because I took a day off on Monday, I have an extremely large number of stories...despite brutal editing. So the final edit is up to you. ¤ Critical Reads China loves the US dollar again as America roars back Jin Zhongxia, head of the central bank's research institute, said America's energy revolution and export revival had shaken up the global landscape and would lead to a stronger dollar over time. "The dollar's global dominance will continue," he said. Dr Jin said the world was moving to a "1+4" system, with the greenback serving as the anchor of global payments, supplemented by "four smaller reserve currencies" – the euro, sterling, yen and yuan. "Compared with the euro area, the dollar zone has much greater resilience to shocks. The debt crisis in the euro area has demonstrated the structural weakness of this currency," he wrote in a paper for the February bulletin of the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard sounds euphoric in this piece from The Telegraph early yesterday evening, but if I were him, I wouldn't be breaking out the party favours too soon. I thank Ulrike Marx for our first story of the day...and the link is here. Left in the Dark: Copper Thieves Rob Detroit Freeways of Light Department of Transportation says one-fifth of the lights along freeways in Metro Detroit aren't working — and copper thieves are mainly to blame. MDOT spokesman Rob Morosi said roughly 20 percent of the lights on poles and beneath overpasses on freeways in Wayne, Oakland, Macomb and St. Clair counties are dark. "We are responsible for about 5,500 light poles and also about 5,000 individual lights that are installed beneath overpasses," Morosi told The Detroit News. "Right now we're estimating 1,100 outages to those poles for a number of reasons." The main reason for many of the outages, according to Morosi, is copper thieves – who are stripping metal from the transformer cabinets. This article was posted on the detroit.cbslocal.com Internet site early Friday morning local time...and I thank West Virignia reader Elliot Simon for sending it. The link is here. Jim Rickards: Currency War 3 Has Just Begun This 40-minute interview with Jim was posted over at the financialsense.com Internet site on Saturday...and I thank reader Harold Jackobsen for bringing it to our attention. The link is here. Doug Casey: The Virtues of Capitalism I rang Doug up the other day and asked if we could chat about my favorite subject, capitalism. I proposed that we discuss the virtues of capitalism, since these days capitalism is almost universally scorned and misunderstood. It is perceived as an evil system that creates greedy, uncaring and corrupt monsters. As part of the crowd that understands the folly in those perceptions, it's our moral obligation to right this wrong! Thankfully, Doug graciously agreed to a back and forth on the matter. I just hope I did it justice! This interview is about a 10-minute read...and was posted on the capitalstexploits.at Internet site on Valentine's Day. The link is here. G20 vows to combat corporate tax avoidance G20 finance ministers meeting in Moscow have pledged to crack down on tax avoidance by multinational companies. The final communique said members were determined to develop measures to stop firms shifting profits from a home country to pay less tax elsewhere. The UK, France and Germany were the main movers behind the drive. The communique also said members would refrain from devaluing their currencies to gain economic advantage, amid fears of a new "currency war". This article was posted on the bbc.co.uk Internet site on Sunday...and I thank Casey Research's own David Galland for passing it along. The link is here. U.K. Government and Isle of Man in deal to stop offshore tax evasion Under the agreement, a wide range of financial information on UK taxpayers with accounts in the Isle of Man will be passed automatically to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC). A disclosure facility will allow account-holders to come forward and settle their past affairs before the details are automatically passed on to HMRC. Welcoming the agreement, Chancellor George Osborne said: "The Government is committed to tackling tax evasion and this agreement will greatly enhance HMRC's ability to clamp down on those who try to hide their money offshore. This item was posted on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site early yesterday afternoon GMT...and I thank Roy Stephens for sharing it with us. The link is here. Sterling strikes seven-month lows amid calls for further weakness During morning trading on Monday, the pound fell 0.5pc to $1.5438 - its lowest level since July last year - before recovering to trade around $1.5483. Sterling's slide came as Martin Weale, a senior Bank of England policymaker, said on Saturday that the pound may need to weaken further, which would help to make exports cheaper and spur growth. "Provided the calmer atmosphere we have seen since the summer is sustained, we may see further benefits of the depreciation." With the Bank of England appearing comfortable with sterling's drop, traders suggested that more losses are likely. "Policymakers are hoping that a weaker sterling will help revive the economy," said John Hardy, currency strategist at Saxo Bank. Print, print, print! So much for what was agreed upon in the BBC story that's posted above this one. I thank Roy Stephens for sending this article from The Telegraph. It was posted on their website early Monday afternoon GMT...and the link is here. Britain losing fight against EU bank pay restrictions Final negotiations are underway in Brussels on a proposal to ban bonuses that exceed total salaries that leaders in Brussels want to put before the European Parliament tomorrow. Germany, which was thought to support the UK's call for a less strict ratio, appears now to be backing the measures leaving London increasingly isolated. British diplomats circulated an informal paper on Friday, seen by The Daily Telegraph, warning that "as the proposal stands it risks undermining prudential soundness by incentivising a sharp increasing in fixed salaries, thus limiting a bank's capital flexibility in a downturn." This commentary appeared on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site during the London lunch hour yesterday...and it's Roy's second offering in a row. The link is here. Looming Elections: Berlin Warns Italians against Berlusconi Top politicians tend to remain silent on elections being held abroad. But German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle this week has issued a barely concealed warning to Italians against voting for Silvio Berlusconi. And he isn't the only one in Berlin who is nervous about a possible return of "Il Cavaliere." It was German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble who allegedly fired the first shot. In an interview with the Italian newsmagazine l'Espresso late last week, Schäuble warned Italians against voting for Silvio Berlusconi in general elections scheduled for Feb. 24 and 25. "Silvio Berlusconi may be an effective campaign strategist," the magazine quotes Schäuble as saying. "But my advice to the Italians is not to make the same mistake again by re-electing him." A Finance Ministry spokesman was quick to deny that Schäuble had said such a thing. But this week, given Berlusconi's seemingly inexorable climb toward the top of Italian public opinion polls, two more top German politicians have warned against re-electing a man who many see as being partially responsible for the economic troubles facing the country. This article showed up on the German website spiegel.de yesterday during their lunch hour...and I thank Roy Stephens for sending it. The link is here. Saxo Bank CEO Says Euro Is Doomed as Currency Woes Resurface Lars Seier Christensen, co-chief executive officer of Danish bank Saxo Bank A/S, said the euro's recent rally is illusory and the shared currency is set to fail because the continent hasn't supported it with a fiscal union. "The whole thing is doomed," Christensen said in an interview at the bank's Dubai office. "Right now we're in one of those fake solutions where people think that the problem is contained or being addressed, which it isn't at all." "I'd be a bigger seller of the euro at anything near 1.4," according to Christensen, who said he isn't making any speculative bets against the currency. This Bloomberg story was posted on their website in the wee hours of Monday morning Eastern time...and I found it yesterday's edition of the King Report. The link is here. G20 currency truce shortlived as Japan mulls foreign bond buys Shinzo Abe told Japanese politicians that intervention on the markets is among the options being discussed. "There are views calling for foreign bond purchases," he said, pointedly refusing to rule out such action. The comments come despite a G20 statement over the weekend committing all major powers to "refrain from competitive devaluation". Buying foreign bonds is not the same as quantitative easing (QE) by the US and Britain, and crosses a sensitive political line. "It would be a direct violation of the G20 statement," said Hans Redeker from Morgan Stanley. "We think he is saying this to convince markets that Japan has unlimited firepower to hold down the yen if absolutely necessary. He is trying to break the deflation psychology once and for all." He's also trying his best to talk the yen down without having to resort to outright money printing. In the end, it won't work. This Ambrose Evans-Pritchard offering was posted on The Telegraph's website on Monday evening...and is another offering from Roy Stephens. The link is here. Nine King World News Blogs/Audio Interviews The first blog is with Bill Fleckenstein...and it's headlined "When Gold Turns, it Will Trade Violently to the Upside". Next comes Dan Norcini and Bill Haynes: "One Huge Gold Buyer and Hedge Fund Moves". The third blog is with Michael Pento...and it's entitled "The Antidote For Reckless Governments and Money Printing". The next blog is with James Turk. It bears the headline "Central Planners are About to Completely Lose Control". The next blog is also with James Turk..."So-Called Audit of Fed's Gold Complete Rubbish and Propaganda"...and the third James Turk blog in a row is titled "U.S. Treasury Enters the Gold War". And lastly is Robert Fitzwilson...and it's headlined "Unlimited Fiat Under Guise of Currency Wars Sweeping Planet". The first audio interview is with Egon von Greyerz...and the second audio inteview is with Bill Fleckenstein. 8 armed men steal millions in diamonds from plane at Brussels airport When the armored van set off for Brussels airport carrying $50 million worth of precious stones from Antwerp's high-security diamond district, eight robbers knew exactly what was up. One of the biggest diamond heists of recent memory was about to go down. Behind them, the robbers left embarrassed airport officials trying to explain how thieves could so smoothly get into the airport, stage a robbery and make a clean getaway. Diamond industry officials who pride themselves on the security of their trade were equally mortified. This AP story was picked up on the foxnews.com Internet site yesterday...and it's a very interesting read. Scott Pluschau was the first reader through the door with this story yesterday...and the link is here. It Could be a Perfect Moment to Act Right Now: Louis James, Casey Research Louis James, Chief Metals & Mining Investment Strategist of Casey Research, explains why he see a window of opportunity right now in the gold and silver mining space of what could be "a perfect moment with those that have the guts to act". Louis also got company-specific in this interview as we talked about two stories in particular. Louis gave his opinions about one of his Top Picks right now, Atna Resources...as well as on Minco Silver. Gecko Research recently made a site visit to Minco's Fuwan Project. We also touched a bit on the current bid on Orko Silver by both First Majestic and Coeur d'Alene. The higher bid by Coeur came as a surprise to Louis. This 26 minute audio interview with Louis was posted on the geckoresearch.com Internet site on Saturday...and the link is here. Ted Butler: Bullish on Gold But JP Morgan Excessively Short in Silver "The good news is that the deliberate price smash appears to have fulfilled its objective, namely, to allow the commercials to buy great quantities of COMEX gold and silver contracts. When the commercials buy all they can shake from the tree, a price bottom is formed. The bad news is the blatant nature of the deliberate price smash, which confirms that a market manipulation exists for which a specific federal agency was expressly created to prevent. "Whereas gold's COT structure in undeniably bullish on historical measurements, silver is a long way from what would be considered flat-out bullish (as is the case in gold). There is a single factor underlying this difference – JPMorgan. This must read excerpt from Ted Butler's Weekend Review to his paying subscribers was posted on the goldsilverworld.com Internet site on Sunday...and the link is here. Audit of gold at New York Fed fails to cover leases and swaps The U.S. government's gold in New York is safe in a vault underneath Manhattan, and some of the precious metal there is purer than previously thought. That's according to a first-ever audit conducted last year by the Treasury Department of U.S. gold on deposit at Federal Reserve banks in New York and elsewhere. As part of the audit, the Treasury tested a sample of the government's 34,021 gold bars in the New York Fed's vault five stories below Manhattan's financial district, according to the inspector general's office. Auditors drilled tiny holes into the bars to remove samples that were tested for fineness in a process called assaying. As Chris Powell stated in the GATA release where I found this L.A. Times St

Retail consumers drive gold demand in India Posted: 22 Feb 2013 01:13 PM PST Retail consumers drive gold demand in India Retail consumers' unabated appetite to own an additional piece of gold, has so far nullified the government's efforts to curb its import in order to control the burgeoning current account deficit (CAD). Consequently, India's gold demand unexpectedly shot up 41% in the fourth quarter of 2012. The World Gold Council (WGC) data showed India's gold demand at 262 tonnes in the last quarter of 2012 compared with 185.5 tonnes in the corresponding period last year. Despite the government four-fold increase in customs duty to discourage gold imports, its arrival into the country saw a minuscule 12% decline at 864.2 tonnes in the calendar year 2012 compared with 986.3 tonnes in the previous year. "India's gold demand is largely driven by a combination of both retail and urban consumers. While urban consumers are raising gold holding in proportion to their rise in income be it salaried or business class, continuous upward revision in minimum support price (MSP) of agri commodities left more investible surplus at the hands of farmers. Being gold the only next to food and shelter, this investible surplus is coming into gold from rural India," said Umesh Parekh, Managing Director of Shree Ganesh Jewellery House Ltd. Another story about huge gold demand in India. This one was posted on the business.standard.com Internet site on Tuesday evening IST...and it's also courtesy of Ulrike Marx. The link is here.

A Bottom and a Buy Signal: Gartman Shorts Gold Posted: 22 Feb 2013 01:13 PM PST "There should be significant declines in the Commercial net short positions in both gold and silver in today's report" ¤ Yesterday In Gold & Silver The gold price chopped around a few dollars either side of the $1,645 spot mark through all of Far East and early London trading yesterday. There was a bit of a sell-off at the Comex open, but that reversed itself in short order. But thirty minutes the afternoon London gold fix was in at 3:00 p.m. GMT...10:00 a.m. in New York...the bullion banks' high-frequency traders went to work. Gold's low price tick [$1,632.10 spot] came fifteen minutes after the Comex close...and from there, gold more or less traded sideways into the electronic close. The spike high of the day...$1,650.80 spot...came about 9:05 a.m. Eastern time. Gold closed the Thursday trading session at $1,634.40 spot...down another $8.20. With a new low price set for this move down, volume was very chunky at 189,000 contracts, give or take. The price action in silver was similar...but far more 'volatile'... After trading around the $30.80 spot mark for twelve hours and change, the silver price jumped up shortly after 11:00 a.m. in London...and then, like gold, hit its high tick of the day [$31.16 spot] at 9:05 a.m. in early Comex trading in New York. A slightly negative price bias developed from there until after the London p.m. gold fix was in...and then the usual engineered price decline began. Silver's low price tick [$30.14 spot] came a few minutes after 1:00 p.m. Eastern time...and the subsequent rally wasn't allowed to get far. In case you missed it, silver had an intraday move of over a buck. With their big short position covered in SLV...now JPMorgan Chase is now working on their short position on the Comex in earnest. Silver closed at $30.40 spot...down 38 cents on the day. Net volume was very respectable...around 40,000 contracts. The dollar index opened on Thursday in the Far East at 80.07...and began to chop higher from there. The zenith...80.58...came shortly after 10:00 a.m. in London...and then began a long, slow decline right into the close of electronic trading in New York. The index finished the day at 80.39...up 32 basis points. It should be more than obvious to anyone, that the currency moves yesterday were no factor in the prices of the precious metals on world markets. Much to my amazement, the gold stocks gapped up at the open...and almost made it to the 400 mark on the HUI. But once the engineered price decline began in the gold, the gold stocks sold off a bit. However, the HUI still managed to finish in positive territory...up 0.69%. The silver stocks finished mixed despite the pounding that JPMorgan et al gave the metal itself...and Nick Laird's Intraday Silver Sentiment Index closed down a tiny 0.19%. (Click on image to enlarge) The CME's Daily Delivery Report showed that 127 gold and 66 silver contracts were posted for delivery on Monday within the Comex-approved depositories. In gold, the two largest short/issuers were JPMorgan and Canada's own Bank of Nova Scotia with 97 and 21 contracts apiece. The only two long/stoppers were Deutsche Bank and HSBC USA. They stopped 82 and 45 contracts respectively. In silver, Jefferies was the sole short/issuer once again...and the Bank of Nova Scotia stopped 62 of them. The link to yesterday's Issuers and Stoppers Report is here. The GLD ETF reported that an authorized participant withdrew 96,790 troy ounces of gold yesterday. But the big surprise was SLV, as an authorized participant deposited 870,194 troy ounces. Go figure! The U.S. Mint had no sales report yesterday. Wednesday was another busy day over at the Comex-approved depositories as 1,247,060 troy ounces of silver were deposited...and only 215,978 troy ounces were shipped out. The link to that activity is here. Joshua Gibbons, the Silver Bar Guru of SLV, updated his website with the latest in/out activity in all of SLV's bullion vaults for the week that was...and it's always worth checking out. The link is here. Yesterday I ran a story headlined "Houston city council passes ordinance to fingerprint, photograph precious metal sellers". The story is true, but only up to a point. I got an e-mail from reader Joseph Kahn..."and the by-law only applies to jewellery, not bullion and coins, so no Social Security Number has to be provided when you're selling that. The law was passed to satisfy the city." [As an aside, we have a similar law in the city of Edmonton...all precious metal sellers have to provide two pieces of I.D...one of which must be a government picture I.D...no photo or fingerprint...and any jewellery purchased has to be held for forty-five days in case the police wish to examine it. A smart crime-prevention move which should be adopted everywhere. So take the blue pill and call me in the morning. - Ed] I have a fairly large number of stories for you today, so I hope you can find the time to wade through the ones that interest you. ¤ Critical Reads Mary Jo White's Latest Conflict of Interest Here's the big question for Mary Jo White: If she becomes chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, where will her interests lie? With the public that pays her salary? Or with the people handing her the big bucks? White is the white-collar defense lawyer and former U.S. attorney nominated by President Barack Obama to lead the SEC. Her financial disclosures say that upon leaving New York-based Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, the law firm will give her $42,500 a month in retirement pay for life, or more than $500,000 a year. This means she has a direct interest in Debevoise's future profits, and therefore an incentive to help make sure only good things come the firm's way. Debevoise's partner-retirement plan is unfunded, meaning the firm pays benefits from its continuing business operations. The proof that this poses a problem can be seen in her proposed solution. White, 65, said that after she is confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Debevoise would make a lump-sum payment to her in lieu of monthly retirement checks for the next four years. After that, when presumably she is no longer the SEC's chairman, her monthly payments would resume for life. Bloomberg columnist Jonathan Weil tees up Mary Jo and drives here down the fairway in this must read op-ed piece posted on the Bloomberg website late yesterday afternoon. I thank Manitoba reader Ulrike Marx for today's first story...and the link is here. Matt Taibbi -- At Least We're Not Measles: Rationalizing Drone Attacks Hits New Low Read an absolutely amazing article today. Entitled "Droning on about Drones," it was published in the online version of Dawn, Pakistan's oldest and most widely read English-language newspaper, and written by one Michael Kugelman, identified as the Senior Program Associate for South Asia at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. In this piece, the author's thesis is that all this fuss about America's drone policy is overdone and perhaps a little hysterical. Yes, he admits, there are some figures that suggest that as many as 900 civilians have been killed in drone strikes between 2004 and 2013. But, he notes, that only averages out to about 100 civilians a year. Apparently, we need to put that number in perspective: This latest offering from Matt was posted on the Rolling Stone website mid-afternoon yesterday Eastern time. It's not overly long...and well worth reading if you have the time. I thank Ulrike Marx for her second offering in a row...and the link is here. [Note: I didn't see any 'pithy prose'. - Ed] The Rookie: If there's a crisis on Jack Lew's Treasury watch, buy gold Introducing Jack Lew to the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday, New York Democrat Chuck Schumer said the Treasury nominee has an "uncanny ability to delve into a subject" and "master it." Americans can only hope, because you wouldn't know it based on the little that Mr. Lew claims to have known about what happened during his tenure at Citigroup from 2006-2008. Mr. Lew's confirmation hearing was a substance-free zone, including his own job history. He was a senior executive at the giant failing bank before and during the financial crisis, but over several hours Wednesday he gave the impression he was there mostly to cash a paycheck. And when Orrin Hatch (R., Utah) ticked off the problems that afflicted the two Citi divisions that Mr. Lew oversaw as chief operating officer, the nominee seemed to know less about them than Mr. Hatch. "I don't recall specific conversations" about any of several Citi-run hedge funds that were imploding at the time, said Mr. Lew. "I was aware there were funds that were in trouble." Totally bought and paid for by the powers that be...Jack sounds like the perfect man for the top job at the U.S. Treasury Department. I thank Washington state reader S.A. for sending this Wall Street Journal story our way...and the link is here. From Watery Bourbon to Horse-Meat Chili: Hidden Inflation is Everywhere We've had an endless series of products whose ingredients have been cheapened in order to maintain the price. Consumers won't be able to taste the difference, the theory goes. So, as the horse-meat lasagna scandal in Europe is spiraling beautifully out of control, we're now getting hit where it hurts: Maker's Mark is watering down its bourbon. Unlike the horse-meat folks, Maker's Mark announced it. They even had an official reason. "Fact is, demand for our bourbon is exceeding our ability to make it, which means we're running very low on supply," said the missive that COO Rob Samuels sent to his customers. This businessinsider.com story from yesterday morning Eastern time is a must read if this is the first you've heard of these items. It's Roy Stephens' first offering of the day...and the link is here. Dead Animals 'Go Inter-railing': Horsemeat Scandal Is a Europe-Wide Problem This week the scandal over horsemeat in hamburgers and lasagna has spread beyond Britain, revealing cracks in the Continent's food supply chain. Authorities are now trying to trace the meat's circuitous path across Europe to prevent future problems. "No artificial flavors or colors," the packaging of the frozen Spaghetti Bolognese prepared meal at British supermarket chain Tesco's promises. The additional ingredient causing such a furor right now, however, isn't even artificial. The mislabeling was even worse: Instead of the beef advertised, the product, which was sold under the chain's own Everyday Value label, contained a huge amount of horsemeat -- at least 60 percent. And all natural. The horsemeat was first discovered in frozen hamburgers, but later in lasagna and more recently in the spaghetti product. In Britain, people are starting ask whether it is possible to eat frozen foods with a good conscience. For days now the ground horsemeat scandal has been leading the headlines as the main political issue in the country. On Tuesday, the House of Commons spent its second day in a row debating practices in European meat production that can get dicey. The only question I have is..."Do you want fries with that?" This story showed up on the German website spiegel.de early on Wednesday evening...and it's Roy's second offering in a row. The link is here. France 'to miss 2013 deficit reduction pledge' France will probably miss this year's public deficit goal, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said, the first time a member of the government's inner circle has admitted doubts over the policy cornerstone are valid. France is battling to maintain its credibility with its European Union partners, rating agencies and financial markets in the face of serious misgivings over its efforts to reform a stalled economy and cut the budget gap this year to the EU ceiling of 3 percent of economic output. Asked on Wednesday whether the state audit body was right in suggesting on Tuesday that France would overshoot the target, Fabius replied: "I think it's likely, and that means we must both avoid squeezing what remains of growth while being responsible and making sure the word 'savings' is part of our vocabulary." Every country is circling the drain faster and faster now. France has bowed to the obvious...and the situation is probably several orders of magnitude worse than their admitting to. This article appeared on the france24.com Internet site on Wednesday...and I thank Roy Stephens for bringing it to our attention. The link is here. Eurozone recession hits Germany hard A sharp fall in exports from the region's trading hub caused the larger-than-expected decline, as official figures showed that the eurozone as a whole slumped 0.6pc in the quarter, the worst performance in over three years. The currency area has contracted for three quarters running and by 0.5pc for the year as a whole. It is 1pc smaller than in September 2011. Economists had expected Germany to be hit by the bloc's waning fortunes but the scale of decline came as a surprise. France, which shrank by 0.3pc, and Italy, which was down 0.9pc – a sixth straight quarterly decline, also performed worse than predicted. Evidence of the extent of the eurozone's troubles came as Japan also posted a shock 0.1pc contraction in the three months to December – its third successive quarterly slump. The weak figures stoked speculation that new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe would step up his efforts to stimulate the economy. This commentary appeared on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site during the London lunch hour yesterday...and it's also courtesy of Roy Stephens. The link is here. The World from Berlin: 'It's Worth Promoting Economic NATO' The European Union and United States say they will soon begin negotiations to create the world's largest free-trade zone. German editorialists argue a deal is necessary if the West wants to help shape global politics and address the challenge of a rising China. Together, the United States and the European Union account for nearly half of the world's economic output and 30 percent of global trade. They have directly invested more than €2.8 trillion ($3.7 trillion) on both sides of the Atlantic; and each day goods and services worth €2 billion are traded across the ocean. US President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel both believe this figure could be increased significantly, adding some much needed economic stimulus in America and Europe. This short story appeared on the spiegel.de Internet site yesterday afternoon Europe time...and is another offering from Roy Stephens. The link is here. Double taxation row as Brussels launches transactions tax proposal The European Commission was under fire Thursday (14 February) over claims that its planned tax on financial transactions (FTT) would lead to double taxation. Unveiling the plans for an FTT backed by 11 EU countries, Taxation Commissioner Algirdas Semeta said that it was a "fair, technically sound and legally robust tax." The proposal puts a 0.1 percent levy on bonds and shares and 0.01 percent on derivative products. Measures have also been put in place to prevent traders from circumventing the system by operating from outside the EU-11. This very interesting read appeared on the euobserver.com Internet site yesterday evening in Europe...and the stories from Roy Stephens keep on coming. The link is here. First Monte Paschi Banker Arrested With €40 Million Stash Unfortunately for the apparently not quite big enough to not fail Italian bank's former leaders, the Monte Paschi derivative debacle just won't go away. As Reuters reported yesterday, the first (or many) arrests have been made. Gianluca Baldassarri and four other people suspected of criminal conspiracy to commit fraud were arrested after police seized €40 million of apparently ill-gotten gains. The alleged fraud and bribery case charges Baldassarri (who left shortly after the arrival of the new CEO in Jan 2012) of misleading regulators over the true nature of a secret derivative contract that was found in a safe by the bank's new management in October 2012. Echoing JPM's London Whale, they uncovered a 'systematic overshooting of risk limits' in the management of the group's €24 billion prop book. Baldassarri was arrested quickly after the police found evidence that he was trying to cash in securities worth over €1 million soon after the funds were seized. This must read story appeared on the Zero Hedge website yesterday...and I thank Marshall Angeles for finding it for us. The link is here. Russia will not tolerate foreign pressure – Putin Russian President Putin has defended the right of citizens to express their views and organize political parties, but drew the line at those that receive their funding from abroad. ­"The constitutional right of citizens to the freedom of speech is inviolable and unshakeable," Putin declared at an expanded session of the Federal Security Service (FSB) on Thursday. "However, nobody has a right to sow hatred and rock society and the country, thus jeopardizing the life, wellbeing and peace of millions of our citizens." The Russian leader mentioned the recent restrictions that were placed on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that work on specific projects in Russia, yet receive their funding from abroad. Nobody has a right to speak on behalf of the entire country, especially those groups and structures that rely on foreign funding for their existence, Putin said. Bravo Vladimir! Any serious student of the "New Great Game" knows precisely what this is all about. It's a must read for sure...and it showed up on the Russia Today website on Thursday evening Moscow time. It's another story courtesy of Roy Stephens...and the link is here. Currency wars come to Moscow as G20 meets It won't quite be hand-to-hand combat, but 'currency wars' will come to Moscow on Friday as finance officials from the Group of 20 nations spar over Japan's expansive policies that have driven down the value of the yen. The G20 forum, which put together a huge financial backstop to halt a market meltdown in 2009, is back in the spotlight after a week in which the Group of Seven rich nations tried, and spectacularly failed, to speak on currencies with one voice. The G7 has long been the powerhouse of financial diplomacy. But tension between Washington and Tokyo has risen over new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's bid to end two decades of deflation. The G7 issued a joint statement on Tuesday reaffirming "our longstanding commitment to market determined exchange rates". Yet the show of unity was quickly undermined by off-the-record briefings critical of Japan. This must read Reuters piece was posted on their website early yesterday evening Eastern time...and it's another article courtesy for Roy Stephens. The link is here...and I note they've changed the headline since I posted the story last evening. Now it reads "G20 wrangles on forex, deficits at Moscow talks" Chinese Globes Anger the Philippines With a Territorial Claim There's a new tiff brewing between China and the Philippines, Raissa Robles writes for the South China Morning Post, and it's all to do with globes. Robles writes that a tiny, barely-noticeable line on some Chinese-made globes has created insult in Manilla where they are being sold in bookshops. The line was first noticed by a group of Facebook users, who then emailed a number of news organizations about the globes. A slideshow Robles put on her personal website details the controversy. The problem is that these globes appear to use China's "nine-dash" map of the sea, first published in 1947, which shows Chinese territory extending hundreds of miles south from China's Hainan Island to the equatorial waters off the coast of Borneo. This article showed up on the businessinsider.com Internet site late Wednesday afternoon Eastern time...and I thank Roy Stephens for his final offering in today's column. The link is here. Two King World News Blogs/Audio Interviews The first blog is with John Hathaway. It bears the title "Give-Up Phase as Gartman Shorting Gold is Bullish". The next two blogs are with Felix Zulauf. Part I is headlined "World Headed Toward 1987 Style Market Collapse"...and Part II is entitled "We May See a Shortage of Gold and a Massive Price Spike". The audio interview is with Gerald Celente. [The Hathaway interview...along with the two Zulauf interviews are definitely worth your time...and Part III will be available on the KWN website later today. - Ed] Silver: right now [probably] the best asset in the world This is Paul Mylchreest's Thunder Road report for February that Lawrie Wi

January Gold Imports Into India Surge 23 Percent, Hit 18-Month High Posted: 22 Feb 2013 01:13 PM PST "Well, was that the bottom? Beats me, but if I had to bet a dollar, I'd say we're pretty close...at least in gold." ¤ Yesterday In Gold & Silver The gold price traded pretty flat through Far East trading on their Friday...but then dipped slightly at the London open going into the a.m. gold fix. From there it traded flat until 1:00 p.m. GMT...8:00 a.m. in New York...and about twenty minutes before the Comex open. By the time that JPMorgan et al were done for the day, the low tick checked in at $1,596.00 spot around 10:35 a.m. Eastern time. From there, the price rallied back to the $1,610 spot mark, but wasn't allowed to trade above that price for the rest of the Friday session. On an engineered price decline of this magnitude, the trading volume was immense...around 284,000 contracts, give or take...and gold closed at $1,610.10 spot...down $24.30 on the day. Of course silver was the metal that "da boyz" were really after...and it was under light selling pressure right from the moment that Far East trading began on their Friday morning. However, by 1:00 p.m. GMT in London, silver was only down about a dime from Thursday's close. But once the engineered price decline began, it was sold down hard throughout the entire Comex trading session...and the low tick of the day [$29.59 spot] was set at precisely 2:45 p.m. Eastern time in electronic trading. The subsequent rally wasn't allowed to get far...although the price did recover about 20 cents from its low. Silver closed the Friday trading day at $29.80 spot...down 60 cents from Thursday's close. Gross volume was around 96,000 contracts, but once the spreads and roll-overs for March were subtracted, the net volume was only 44,000 contracts. The dollar index opened at 80.39 on Friday morning in Japan...and hit its nadir [80.22] just minutes before the London open. The high tick [80.57] was in around 7:30 a.m. in New York...and from there the index faded a hair in the close. The dollar index finished the day at 80.48...up about 10 basis points. For the umpteenth day in a row, there was no correlation between the currencies and the precious metal price action. The gold stocks gapped down and then headed for the nether reaches of the earth...and from about 10:30 a.m. Eastern time onwards, the stocks bounced along the bottom despite the fact that the gold price recovered a bit after that. The HUI got smoked to the tune of 3.61%. The silver stocks got hit pretty hard as well, but did a little better than their golden brethren. Nick Laird's Intraday Silver Sentiment Index closed down 3.20%. (Click on image to enlarge) And here's the long-term Silver Sentiment Index so you can see how things look going back several years. (Click on image to enlarge) The CME's Daily Delivery Report showed that 78 gold and 65 silver contracts were posted for delivery on Tuesday within the Comex-approved depositories. It was "all the usual suspects" in gold...and in silver it was Jefferies as the big short/issuer of note once again with 60 contracts issued...and Canada's Bank of Nova Scotia stopping 63 contracts. The link to yesterday's Issuers and Stoppers Report is here. There were no reported changed in either GLD or SLV yesterday. The U.S. Mint had a small sales report yesterday. They sold 5,000 ounces of gold eagles...1,000 one-ounce 24K gold buffaloes...and 35,000 silver eagles. Month-to-date the mint has sold 43,000 ounces of gold eagles...3,000 one-ounce 24K gold buffaloes...and 1,643,500 silver eagles. Based on these sales, the silver/gold sales ratio for February to date stands at just under 36 to 1. Over at the Comex-approved depositories on Thursday, they didn't report receiving any silver, but did ship 350,997 troy ounces of the stuff out the door...and the link to that activity is here. I'm happy to report that were big improvements in the Commercial net short positions in both silver and gold in yesterday's Commitment of Traders Report from the CFTC. In silver, the Commercial net short position declined by 5,149 contracts...or 25.7 million ounces. The total Commercial net short position is now down to 234.0 million ounces of silver. The Big 4 traders are short 256.7 million ounces of silver, or 109.7% of the entire Commercial net short position...and Ted Butler says that JPMorgan Chase is short 167.5 million ounces of that amount all by itself. The '5 through 8' traders are short an additional 54.2 million ounces of silver, bringing the Big 8's total up to 310.9 million ounces...of which JPMorgan Chase holds over 50% of the Big 8's short position on its own. As far as concentration goes...the Big 4 are short 50.5% of the entire Comex futures market in silver...of which 33 percentage points of that amount is held by JPMorgan on its own. Just think about that for a second....one trader is short one third of the entire silver market! And it's my opinion the Canada's own Bank of Nova Scotia is short about 11 percentage points of the Comex silver market as well...so these two banks are short about 44% of the entire silver market between them on a net basis...and these are minimum percentages. The '5 through 8' traders are short another 10.7 percentage points of the Comex futures market in silver. So the Big 8 are short over 61% of the silver market on a net basis. In gold, the Commercial net short position declined by 13,954 contracts, or 1.40 million ounces. The Commercial net short position in gold is now down to 16.07 million ounces. The Big 4 are short 9.92 million ounces...and the '5 through 8' largest traders are short an additional 5.66 million ounces. The Big 8 are short 15.58 million ounces of gold, or 97.0% of the entire Commercial net short position. As far as concentration goes, the Big 4 are short 27.1% of the entire Comex futures market in gold on a 'net' basis. The '5 through 8' largest traders are short an additional 15.4 percentage points...so, in total, the Big 8 are short 42.5% of the entire Comex futures market in gold on a net basis and, once again, those are minimum percentages. Here's Nick's now world famous "Days of World Production to Cover Short Positions" chart. JPMorgan is short about 87 days of world silver production...and it's my opinion that Canada's Bank of Nova Scotia is short about 27 days of world silver production. That's two banks short 114 days of world silver production between them...just about four months. Also note how the four short traders in silver totally dominate the short side. The '5 through 8' trader's position...even in total...just don't matter. If you'd like to view the interactive, long-term COT charts going back about sixteen years, you can do so by clicking here for silver...and here for gold. It nearly goes without saying that since the Tuesday cut-off for yesterday's COT Report, there has been an even bigger improvement in the Commercial net short positions in both silver and gold than we had in this last report. I'm guessing between 7-10,000 more contracts in silver...and 20-30,000 additional contracts in gold...especially after the engineered price declines we saw yesterday. Yesterday was a capitulation to the down side in spades...all courtesy of JPMorgan and friends. Further to the story about producing I.D. for buying or selling gold bullion or jewellery in the U.S.A...I got the following e-mail from reader Harry Morgan yesterday... Hello Ed, I just thought I'd let you know that yesterday I went to Ambassador Jewelers here in Tucson to sell (sadly) a measly 10 ounces of silver. To do so I had to submit to having my right index finger inked and fingerprinted. When I told them (politely) that I would prefer not to have to have my finger inked up and pressed onto a piece of paper I was informed that they would be unable to purchase the silver. I asked them when this process of finger printing became a standard step they told me January 1st of this year. Furthermore, a few months ago when I went to my bank (Wells Fargo) to cash a check from Ambassador (any time you cash in more then $600 of precious metals here in Tucson you are issued a check instead of cash) the teller at the bank asked me what the check was for. I asked the bank clerk to elaborate on what she meant by 'what the check was for'. The teller (a nice young lady) told me it was now 'required policy to ask everyone who was cashing or depositing a check from a jewelry store, coin store or a coin & stamp store'. I told this clerk that in all fairness it was none of the bank's business why the jewelry store issued me a check. At this the clerk went and got the bank manager. I told the bank manager that it was none of the bank's business why the jewelry store issued me a check. The bank manager told me that he was required to record this information otherwise he could not process the check. I asked him if he couldn't process the check or the bank couldn't process the check (I was starting to get irritated). So I said I worked at the store and this was a paycheck, then said that I had robbed a home, stolen some jewelry and sold that to Ambassador, then I said I had bought them all lunch and this check was to cover my expenses. Admittedly I was being an ass but I was very agitated about this intrusion into my personal business. So we had this little stand off until I said (firmly and evenly) that I sold a couple of my watches. At this they processed my check. Anyway, the reason for my email was to let you/others know that, at least in Tucson, when you sell any precious metals (even 10 measly ounces of silver), you will be fingerprinted. And so it goes ... (down the toilet). All the best, Harry Considering it's a Saturday column, I don't have that many stories for you today...and I'm rather happy about that. ¤ Critical Reads Wal-mart sales a 'total disaster', say leaked emails The retailer's shares slid after Jerry Murray, vice president of finance and logistics, also told colleagues that it was "the worst start to a month I have seen in my ~7 years with the company". "Well, we just had one of those weeks here at Wal-Mart US. Where are all the customers? And where's their money?" Wal-Mart, which owns Asda, had been expecting a boost to February sales from the Super Bowl and other factors including milder weather across the Atlantic. This article was posted on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site yesterday evening GMT...and I thank "David in California" for our first story of the day. The link is here. JPMorgan Said to Fire Traders, Realign Pay Amid Slump JPMorgan Chase & Co., grappling with Wall Street's worst year for stock-trading since 2008, cut pay at the equities unit about 4 percent and pushed out about three dozen employees, people with knowledge of the moves said. About two dozen U.S. traders and sales staff were fired, and some senior employees left voluntarily as the unit aligned pay more closely with revenue, said the people, asking to not be identified because the measures aren't public. The bank also dismissed equity analysts last week, three people said, with one saying about a dozen were affected. Industry-wide equities- trading revenue fell 5 percent last year, the third straight annual drop, according to analytics firm Coalition Ltd. This Bloomberg story was posted on their website late yesterday morning Mountain time...and I thank Manitoba reader Ulrike Marx for sending it our way. The link is here. Matt Taibbi....Gangster Bankers: Too Big to Jail The deal was announced quietly, just before the holidays, almost like the government was hoping people were too busy hanging stockings by the fireplace to notice. Flooring politicians, lawyers and investigators all over the world, the U.S. Justice Department granted a total walk to executives of the British-based bank HSBC for the largest drug-and-terrorism money-laundering case ever. Yes, they issued a fine – $1.9 billion, or about five weeks' profit – but they didn't extract so much as one dollar or one day in jail from any individual, despite a decade of stupefying abuses. People may have outrage fatigue about Wall Street, and more stories about billionaire greed-heads getting away with more stealing often cease to amaze. But the HSBC case went miles beyond the usual paper-pushing, keypad-punching­ sort-of crime, committed by geeks in ties, normally associated­ with Wall Street. In this case, the bank literally got away with murder – well, aiding and abetting it, anyway. For at least half a decade, the storied British colonial banking power helped to wash hundreds of millions of dollars for drug mobs, including Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel, suspected in tens of thousands of murders just in the past 10 years – people so totally evil, jokes former New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, that "they make the guys on Wall Street look good." The bank also moved money for organizations linked to Al Qaeda and Hezbollah, and for Russian gangsters; helped countries like Iran, the Sudan and North Korea evade sanctions; and, in between helping murderers and terrorists and rogue states, aided countless common tax cheats in hiding their cash. Despite its length, this essay by Matt Taibbi is an absolute must read from one end to the other...and I thank Marshall Angeles for sharing it with us. It was posted on the Rolling Stone website on Thursday...and the link is here. Doug Noland: Hedge Funds Gone Wild At the same time, there is also ongoing confirmation that the incredible global policymaking and liquidity backdrop is much more successful in inflating asset markets than it is in boosting economic performance. In particular - and especially considering policy environments - economies in Europe, Japan and the U.S. continue to un-impress. This bolsters the view of a widening global gap between inflating financial asset prices and underlying economic fundamentals. This begs the question: how might the emboldened "global macro" community play this divergence? Will they play policymaking and the inflating Bubble for all it's worth? Or will they begin to approach speculative markets with a more contrarian bent? With some funds emboldened and still so many others desperate for performance, it seems reasonable to assume that markets become even more speculative – a game of trying to catch folks on the wrong side of trades (i.e. Apple, gold, etc.), underexposed to outperforming sectors (i.e. homebuilders and "short" stocks) and overexposed to the underperforming (i.e. "defensive"). Most call it a "new bull market". I'll stick with "inflating speculative Bubble". Doug Noland's weekly Credit Bubble Bulletin falls into the must read category for me every week. Yesterday's edition is posted at the prudentbear.com Internet site...and the link is here. G20 set to dilute big powers' demands on currencies The Group of 20 nations will not single out Japan over the weak yen and will disregard a call from G7 powers to refrain from using economic policy to target exchange rates, according to a text drafted for finance leaders. A G20 delegate who has seen the communiqué - prepared by finance officials for their bosses - also said it would make no direct mention of new debt-cutting targets, something Germany is pressing for but which the United States wanted struck out. If adopted by G20 finance ministers and central bankers meeting in Moscow on Friday and Saturday, Japan will escape any censure for its expansionary policies which have driven the yen lower and drawn demands for action from some quarters. "There will not be a heavy clash about currencies in the end, because nobody can risk such a negative signal," said another G20 delegation source. This Reuters story, filed from Moscow, was posted on their website mid-afternoon yesterday Eastern time...and I thank Ulrike Marx for her second offering in today's column. The link is here. 'Significant Thermal Explosion': Meteorite Strike in Russia Injures Almost 1,000 Suddenly, there was a flash of light and then a loud explosion bursting windows across the Russian city of Chelyabinsk. A large meteorite detonated over the city on Friday morning, injuring almost 1,000. The disaster could have been much larger. "There was a very loud noise, similar to the roar of an airplane, and then a detonation and the shattering of glass," one of the school pupils told the Russian news website Lifenews.ru. "We've never seen anything like it in our lives. We had the feeling that something very large had landed in the neighboring courtyard." According to initial media reports, some 20 pupils in the school and in a neighboring kindergarten were injured. What caused the windows in Chelyabinsk to shatter was documented in numerous videos and photos. A meteor pushed its way through the atmosphere on Friday morning and broke up some 30 to 50 kilometers above the Earth's surface before several piece crashed to the ground. Across the region, people on their way to work became witnesses to the rare phenomenon. Numerous commuters filmed the meteorite, many of them more by chance than intent: Many Russians have installed video cameras, called dashcams, in their cars in order to help prove their innocence in the case of accidents or to document corrupt traffic cops. It should come as no surprise that this story went viral on the Internet yesterday...and rightly so. This coverage was posted on the German website spiegel.de yesterday...and I thank Roy Stephens for sending it along. The link is here. And if you want to pig out on videos of the event...there are lots linked here. Iraq back at the brink It was Britain that triggered Iraq's modern tragedy, starting with its seizure of Baghdad in 1917 and the haphazard reshaping of a country to fit the colonial needs and economic interests of London. One could argue that the early and unequalled mess created by the British invaders continued to wreak havoc, manifesting itself in various ways - spanning sectarianism, political violence and border feuds between Iraq and its neighbors - until this very day. But of course, the US now deserves most of the credit of reversing whatever has been achieved by the Iraqi people to acquire their ever-elusive sovereignty. It was US secretary of state James Baker who reportedly threatened Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz in a Geneva meeting in 1991 by saying that the US would destroy Iraq and "bring it back to the stone age". The US wars that extended from 1990 to 2011 included a devastating blockade and ended with a brutal invasion. These wars were as unscrupulous as they were violent. Aside from their overwhelming human toll, they were placed within a horrid political strategy aimed at exploiting the country's existing sectarian and other fault lines, therefore triggering civil wars and sectarian hatred from which Iraq is unlikely to cover for many years. This Asia Times story from earlier this week was sent to me by Roy Stephens...and it's a must read for all students of the New Great Game. The link is here. George Soros 'makes $1 billion betting against yen' The yen lost nearly 20pc against the dollar between November and early February, picking up speed as Japan's new government put pressure on the Bank of Japan to ease monetary policy more aggressively to defeat deflation. Soros Fund Management's internal portfolio, which has been led by Scott Bessent since last summer, holds about 10pc Japanese shares, the Wall Street Journal claimed. Investors including David Einhorn's Greenlight Capital, Daniel Loeb's Third Point LLC and Kyle Bass's Hayman Capital Management LP also made big trading profits by riding the yen down, WSJ said. This very short story was posted on The Telegraph's website early Thursday evening London time...and it's courtesy of Roy Stephens. The link is here. Charles Hugh-Smith: The Global Endgame in Fourteen Points An over-indebted, overcapacity economy cannot generate real expansion. It can only generate speculative asset bubbles that will implode, destroying the latest round of phantom collateral. I have endeavored to lay out the global endgame in four recent entries: Is This the Terminal Phase of Global Capitalism 1.0? Note to Fed: Giving the Banks Free Money Won't Make Us Hire More Workers. Cheap, Abundant Credit Creates a Low-Return, Bubble-Prone World Europe Is Not "Fixed": Two Charts For those seeking a summary, here is the global endgame in fourteen points... This Zero Hedge commentary from yesterday was sent to me by Ulrike Marx...and the link is here. A Real Hoot: Great Horned Owl and an SUV collide in central Florida A Great Horned Owl in central Florida went for the ride of its life last week after it got caught behind the grille of an SUV when it collided with the vehicle. "I was driving about 60 miles per hour, and he never moved," said driver Sonji Coney Williams. "And so I said, 'Oh my god, I hit a bird!' And I felt so bad, but it was very dark. And I didn't pull over." Williams was running errands the next day when a family flagged her down and told her there were two enormous yellow eyes peering out from behind her grille. Wildlife service officials arrived shortly and helped rescue it. The photos, along with the rest of the story, was posted on the New York Daily News website this past Monday...and I've been saving it for today. I thank Casey Research's own Doug Hornig for bringing it to our attention...and the link is here. The Doorbell A few years back, the linked video in this story was making the rounds on the Internet...and after a while it disappeared. I always thought it was first rate...and was delighted to see that someone had saved it and posted it again. It's only 59 seconds long...and it's fantastic. I thank Bill Busser for sending it to me a while ago...and I finally have space for it today. The link is here. Four King World News Blogs/Audio Interviews The first blog is Part III of the Felix Zulauf interview. It's headlined " India mulling further efforts to curb gold imports Posted: 22 Feb 2013 01:13 PM PST India mulling further efforts to curb gold imports The rumblings are getting louder by the day. The Indian government is considering more steps to curb gold imports and is looking to put a cap on the purchases of the precious metal to contain the country's swelling current account deficit. The world's biggest gold importer has been trying to get its population to buy less of the metal and help bring down the country's import bill. Late January, the government hiked the import duty on gold and platinum to 6% from 4% to curb imports of the precious metal. However, realising that an import duty hike was in the offing, bullion retailers purchased 23% more gold in January this year, ahead of the duty hike. "The shipment was the highest in 18 months and clearly undermined the government's efforts to cap imports. A purchase of 100 tonne in one month is 40% more than the monthly average. This has got the government worried once again," said Baijal Pushpesh, bullion retailer. This mineweb.com story was filed from Mumbai yesterday...and it's Ulrike Marx's final offering in today's column. It's definitely worth your time...and the link is here.

World Gold Council to Teach Central Bankers How to Trade Gold Posted: 22 Feb 2013 01:12 PM PST "For the third day running, gold volume was elevated...and silver volume virtually non-existent" ¤ Yesterday In Gold & Silver The gold price traded sideways until about 1:00 p.m. Hong Kong time on their Wednesday...before sliding to its London low around 12:30 p.m. GMT. The tiny rally that began at the Comex open wasn't allowed to get far...and by the time the London p.m. gold fix rolled around, the price was down about seven bucks from Tuesday's close. From there it traded sideways until the 1:30 p.m. Comex close in New York, before getting sold down a bit more in the electronic market that followed. Gold finished the Wednesday trading session at $1,642.60 spot...down $8.70 on the day. But despite the lack of price action, the volume was pretty decent...around 146,000 contracts. It was virtually the same story in silver, so I shan't dwell on the price action, as it's obvious from the Kitco chart below. Silver closed at $30.78 spot...down 34 cents from Tuesday. Net volume, once the roll-overs out of the March contract were subtracted out, was very anemic...just under 25,000 contracts. The dollar index opened at 80.05 in the Far East on Wednesday morning...and then chopped down to its low of the day of 79.83...which occurred at half-past lunchtime in London. From there it rallied to its high of the day...80.16...by shortly before 11:00 a.m. in New York...and then traded sideways for the rest of the day. The dollar index closed at 80.07...basically unchanged on the day. The gold stocks peaked slightly in positive territory just as the gold price hit its low at the London p.m. gold fix around 10:00 a.m. in New York...and it was all down hill from there, not helped by the two news items from Coeur d'Alene Mines yesterday...links here and here. The HUI finished on its absolute low of the day...down 1.93%. Since CDE is one seventh of Nick Laird's Intraday Silver Sentiment Index, it got smoked to the tune of 2.28%. (Click on image to enlarge) The CME's Daily Delivery Report showed that 129 gold and 51 silver contracts were posted for delivery on Friday within the Comex-approved depositories. In gold, JPMorgan was the biggest short/issuer with 126 contracts...and Deutsche Bank and HSBC USA stopped all 129 contracts. In silver, 50 of the 51 contracts issued were by Jefferies...and by far the biggest long/stopper was Canada's own Bank of Nova Scotia. The link to yesterday's Issuers and Stoppers Report is here. An authorized participant withdrew 29,038 troy ounces of gold from GLD yesterday...and as of 9:05 p.m. yesterday evening, there were no reported changes in SLV. The U.S. Mint had another smallish sales report. They sold 2,000 ounces of gold eagles...and another 170,000 silver eagles. Over at the Comex-approved depositories on Tuesday, they reported receiving another 801,023 troy ounces of silver...and shipped 994 troy ounces out the door...the second day in a row that only one good delivery bar has been shipped out of their collective inventories. The link to that activity is here. I borrowed one paragraph from Ted Butler's mid-week commentary to his paying subscribers yesterday. I've posted it as four separate paragraphs, because I think it gives the subject material more clarity. Besides which, it's too big to use as a quote. Whether it's JPMorgan behind the short covering in SLV or not, it's all but certain there was a single short seller behind the reduction of 10.5 million in shorted shares. It's virtually impossible that many different short sellers all converged at this time to suddenly deposit metal into the SLV. According to data from the NASDAQ, the largest single long position in SLV is less than 7.7 million shares. That means there had to be a single entity in SLV holding a much larger short position than the position of the largest long shareholder. That bothers me...and should bother you as well ...to say nothing of the regulators. The worst thing is the inherent unfairness of long shareholders having to publicly disclose large ownership positions, while short sellers get to operate in the shadows and not report large short holdings at all. Talk about granting a license to play market games. I admit to holding mostly negative feelings towards short selling in general, but someone needs to explain to me why large short sellers are given such an advantage over legitimate buyers. - Silver analyst Ted Butler...13 February 2013 [Note: The link in the quote above is an absolute must read...a real eye-opener as to who are the big SLV long holders! - Ed] It was a slow news day yesterday...especially in the precious metals department...so there won't be much to your final edit efforts today. ¤ Critical Reads Pepe Escobar: The illusory "State of the Empire" Barack Obama would never be so crass as to use a State of the Union (SOTU) address to announce an "axis of evil". No. Double O Bama, equipped with his exclusive license to kill (list), is way slicker. As much as he self-confidently pitched a blueprint for a "smart" - not bigger - US government, he kept his foreign policy cards very close to his chest. Few eyebrows were raised on the promise that "by the end of next year our war in Afghanistan will be over"; it won't be, of course, because Washington will fight to the finish to keep sizeable counterinsurgency boots on the ground - ostensibly to fight, in Obama's words, those evil "remnants of al-Qaeda". Obama promised to "help" Libya, Yemen and Somalia, not to mention Mali. He promised to "engage" Russia. He promised to seduce Asia with the Trans-Pacific Partnership - essentially a collection of corporate-friendly free-trade agreements. On the Middle East, he promised to "stand" with those who want freedom; that presumably does not include people from Bahrain. Pepe takes no prisoners in this bare knuckles and Totally Incorrect commentary on Tuesday night's State of the Union address. His comments on the "Dark side of The Force" are right on the money as far as I'm concerned. It's a must read for all students of the "New Great Game". Normally I would save this for a Saturday column, but not this time. It's courtesy of Roy Stephens, of course...and the link is here. Obama's Treasury Pick Says He Supports Strong U.S. Dollar Jack Lew, President Barack Obama's pick to run the Treasury Department, on Wednesday said he would support a strong U.S. dollar, in line with longstanding U.S. policy. "Treasury has had a longstanding provision through administrations of both parties that a strong dollar is in the best interests of promoting U.S. growth, productivity and competitiveness," Lew said during a hearing vetting him for Treasury secretary, in response to a question. "If confirmed, I would not change that policy." As Chris Powell said in the headline to the GATA release in which this story is embedded..."But just how is the 'strong dollar' policy implemented, except by suppressing gold? Nobody in political authority or journalism ever asks." He would be right about that. You've already read the entire 3-paragraph Reuters story from yesterday...and the link to the hard copy is here. Doug Casey: U.S. of Totalitarianism Here's another audio interview with our fearless leader. This one is with Lew Rockwell...and it was posted on their Internet site yesterday. It runs for about twenty-seven minutes and, as always, it's well worth your time. The link is here. Countries are using devaluation to gain an advantage - and Britain is one of the worst offenders If we accept that countries are indeed trying to gain competitive advantage through devaluation, then of course Britain is one of the worst offenders. At Wednesday's Inflation Report press conference, Sir Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, aired some apparently shocking numbers. Since the financial crisis began, not only had interest rates been reduced to close to zero, but the Bank of England's balance sheet had been expanded by a factor of five. Expressed as a share of GDP, the increase has been greater than that of the US, greater than that of the European Central Bank, and greater than that of Japan. This is way beyond being an unprecedented degree of stimulus. These are completely uncharted waters we are in, and even Sir Mervyn seems to be getting worried by them. Trouble is, he said, that applying ever more monetary stimulus is like "running up a hill". In terms of growth, it seems to be increasingly less effective, but it's turbo-charging asset prices, raising serious questions about how the country is going to cope with the eventual normalisation of interest rates. I consider this story from early yesterday evening in The Telegraph to be another must read. It's courtesy of Manitoba reader Ulrike Marx...and the link is here. Draconian Cash Controls are Coming to France French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault himself presided over Monday's meeting of the National Anti-Fraud Committee. "A first for a head of government," he said at the press conference afterward, to hammer home just how important this was. But he wasn't worried about run-of-the-mill fraud that might fleece some old lady of her life savings. He was worried about people not paying their taxes. Some estimates put tax fraud in the range of €60 to €80 billion per year, others at half that. Either way, a free gift. If the government could just get its hands on that money. So Ayrault trotted out his national plan, a 20-page document that outlined his all-out effort to go after any kind of behavior that could possibly deprive the government of those sorely needed euros. A seamless fit for France's principle: squeeze hapless "fiscal residents" like lemons to get their last drop of juice—fiscal residents, because citizens or foreigners who live in France only part of the year and pay taxes in some other country escape income taxes in France. As Doug Casey said in his Lew Rockwell interview, the tax man is beginning to close the vice in every country. For any expat, or soon-to-be expat, this is a must read. It was posted on the businessinsider.com Internet site yesterday...and I thank Roy Stephens for sending it along. The link is here. Mortgage lending restriction irritates Swiss banks The Swiss government has come under fire after forcing banks to set aside more capital to cover the risk of mortgage loan defaults. The February 13 decision was prompted by fears of a bubble in property prices bursting. As of September 30, banks must boost their capital buffers against domestic mortgage loans by another one per cent. This would mean around SFr3 billion ($3.3 billion) extra capital being tied down in the banking system. The government issued the order on the recommendation of the Swiss National Bank (SNB) as property prices in major cities and tourist regions continue to rise. This article showed up in the English edition of the swissinfo.ch Internet site yesterday...and it's courtesy of Ulrike Marx. The link is here. Diesel shortage pushes Egyptians to the brink Fathy Ali is beyond anger as he queues for hours in a line of 64 trucks and buses to fill his tank with scarce subsidized diesel fuel, known in Egypt as "Solar." "This has become part of my life. I come and wait for hours or days, depending on my luck," the chain-smoking bus driver said at a besieged gas station on Cairo's Suez High Road, wrapped in a scarf and thick coat for the long ordeal. "At the start it used to upset me a lot but now I've kind of given up." Diesel supplies are drying up as a cash-strapped government struggles to cap a mounting bill for subsidies it has promised the IMF it will reform to secure an elusive $4.8 billion loan desperately needed to keep a sagging economy afloat. This Reuters story was filed from Cairo early yesterday morning Eastern time. Egypt is about to implode financially and economically if it doesn't get any more money from the IMF...and this is just the first visible sign that the country is now on the edge. It's not a long read, but well worth your time. It's also courtesy of Roy Stephens...and the link is here. Egypt, Syria - it's just the end of them As Egypt's foreign exchange reserves run out and subsidized bread becomes scarce in the streets, though, the foreign policy punditeska is offering no emergency programs, no calls for international conferences. Instead of Sarkozy's $20 or $40 billion, the International Monetary Fund is dickering with Egypt's President Mohamed Morsi for a mere $4.8 billion - barely two months' financing requirements for Egypt - and demanding in return drastic cuts in the subsidies that keep body and soul together for the poorer half of the population. Egypt's Islamist government has nothing to offer its people but hunger - not belt-tightening, but malnutrition. The country's Minister of Supply, Bassem Auda, told a press conference February 10 that the bread subsidy would be cut to three pita loaves per capita (perhaps 400 calories), the Egypt Daily News reported. Half of the $3 billion annual bread subsidy is wasted on the black market, Auda said. The trouble is that millions of Egyptians subsist on the half that isn't wasted. Most alarming is the emergence of a black market in Egyptian pounds, with a street rate February 10 of 6.95 pounds to the US dollar, against an official rate of 6.72. Reuters reported February 10, "A run on Egypt's pound has left foreign currency in short supply and driven some dealers into the streets in search of people with US dollars to sell, spawning a new black market." Currency deflation (by nearly 15% since the beginning of this year) will translate quickly into higher prices for imported goods, including half of the country's food supply. This is another essay from the Asia Times that would normally wait for my Saturday column...but it fits like a hand in a glove with the prior Reuters piece, so I'm sticking this AT offering in today's blog. It, too, is courtesy of Roy Stephens...and the link is here. BNP Economist: Japan's 'Abenomics' Experiment Will End In Tears In 2015 Japan is one of the hottest trades in the world right now. The consensus view among economists and analysts is that a weaker yen, driven by recently-elected Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's stimulative fiscal and monetary policies, will be great for the Japanese economy. They represent a fighting chance to overcome deflation for the first time in a long time. Ryutaro Kono, the top Japan economist at BNP Paribas, takes a decidedly different view on "Abenomics," as these new policies have been dubbed. Kono writes in a note to clients, "Fiscal expansion only boosts growth while it is happening. When its effects fade, what remains is likely to be a sluggish economy with high inflation, coupled with public debt so swollen that the probability of a fiscal crisis soars." Japan is bankrupt...and nothing will change that...and Mr. Kono describes the situation precisely. This short businessinsider.com story from yesterday was sent to me by Roy Stephens once again...and it's worth skimming for sure. The embedded currency chart is worth the trip all by itself...and the link is here. Three King World News Blogs The first is with Gerald Celente...and it's headlined "The Frightening Trends for 2013 and 2014". Next is this blog with Dr. Stephen Leeb. It's entitled "Gold to Explode as a Percentage of Global Currency Reserves". And lastly is this interview with Robert Fitzwilson. It bears the headline "Russia and China Know the Final Currency Devaluation is Coming". "Red" - CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton This is a speech that Bart gave to the 2013 Arkansas State University Agribusiness Conference in Jonesboro, Arkansas yesterday. It's full of the usual stuff about how they'd like to do their jobs if they weren't being interfered with from all sides. This paragraph is typical... "So, what's to be done? How do we ensure that these 150-year-old-plus markets keep working for you? Well, Congress and President Obama told us to put in place what are called speculative position limits as part of the financial reform law in 2010—Dodd-Frank. So far, however, they're not in place in large part because the largest speculators on the planet are gripping position limits like Charlton Heston's gun. They've tried to kill them on Capitol Hill when the bill was considered. They tried to defund them. They tried to mute them through the rulemaking process, and now they are trying to litigate them to death." I guess this would include the four and a half year investigation into the price management scheme by JPMorgan et al in the silver market. Ted Butler's opinion of the speech was as follows..."Talk about yakking and not saying $#*%!". The text of the speech was posted on the cftc.gov Internet site yesterday...and I thank Edmonton reader Ray Hay for finding it for us. The link is here...and I'm not sure if it's worth your time or not. Houston City council passes ordinance to fingerprint, photograph precious metal sellers Next time you try to sell gold, silver or other precious metals you can expect to be fingerprinted and photographed. The Houston City Council passed an ordinance [on February 6th] meant to help track down criminals who try to resell stolen valuables. Gold-buying businesses will now be required to photograph and fingerprint sellers as well as photograph the items that are being sold to the dealer. "It's going to allow us the tools necessary to combat a lot of the high-end jewelry thefts that's going on in the city, whether it's robberies or burglaries," said Houston Police Officer Rick Barajas. A similar ordinance is already in place for scrap metal sellers and dealers. The story was posted on the abclocal.go.com Internet site on February 5th...and I thank Dutch reader Marianne Vermeu for being the first one through the door with this story yesterday. The link is here. There's a second story on this...and it goes into more detail. It's headlined Brown calls new rules on jewelry dealers 'safety theater'. It was posted in the Houston Chronicle last Wednesday as well...and Elliot Simon sent that story along. The link is here. Silver (probably) now the best asset in the world - Mylchreest Thunder Road Report writer, Paul Mylchreest, predicts a sharp rise in the silver price within the next six months based on historic cyclical data. Mylchreest's arguments are reasonably compelling as far as silver fundamentals are concerned, but there is the ever-continuing worry that there is price manipulation in the commodity exchanges, particularly on the COMEX, which can negate many of these factors. But if indeed a physical available silver shortage develops, which looks increasingly likely on current supply/demand patterns, there will come a time when a physical shortage may overwhelm the manipulators – particularly as new commodity exchanges in the East start to have a greater impact...always assuming, of course, that the manipulators don't try and rig these markets to the same extent too. And this shortage situation could come about sooner rather than later and while Mylchreest's six month prediction may prove optimistic, it does seem that silver is due for a good upwards move in the relatively near future. Lawrence Williams understands the price management scheme by JPMorgan et al better than most...and that is obvious by his comments in the preceding paragraph. Lawrie comments on the latest edition of the Thunder Road Report by Paul Mylchreest...and they were posted on the mineweb.com website sometime yesterday...and I thank California reader Ray Wiberg for bringing it to our attention. The link is here. As for the latest 8-page edition of the Thunder Road Report...Lawrie says that it's not available in the public domain at the moment. But if/when it does show up in the clear, it will be all over the Internet in no time...this column included. World Gold Council to teach central bankers how to trade gold Central bankers will be taught how to trade gold at a three-day seminar on "gold reserves management" to be held in March at the University of California at Berkeley and co-sponsored by the World Gold Council. Apparently modern "gold reserves management" involves a lot more than making sure that the metal is safe in a vault, even if whether and how a central bank should account to the public for its gold trading do not seem to be subjects for discussion at the seminar. The seminar itself doesn't seem to be pursuing transparency. Its invitation is limited to "senior central bankers -- governors, deputy and assistant governors, heads of reserve management, economists, and portfolio managers," and "finance ministry officials and treasury managers." I could hardly believe my eyes when I read the headline to the GATA dispatch about this that Chris Powell put out yesterday. All of Mr. Powell's commentary is a must read for sure...as is the link to the World Gold Council web site. All of this is posted over at the gata.org Internet

Royal Mint to strike first gold coins in India for nearly 100 years Posted: 22 Feb 2013 01:12 PM PST Royal Mint to strike first gold coins in India for nearly 100 years The Royal Mint's gold Sovereign commemorative coins will be struck in India for the first time in nearly a century. The Royal Mint has licensed MMTC-PAMP to strike and market the commemorative Sovereign in India, for the first time since 1918 when the mint operated a branch mint in India for a single year during which 1.3 million Sovereigns were struck. The Cardiff-based Mint said this new agreement was a "significant development" as it seeks to "re-establish the Royal Mint brand and the iconic Sovereign in this major market." I found this story from The Telegraph embedded in a GATA release on Monday...and the link is here.

Russia May Become No. 3 Gold Miner by 2015 Posted: 22 Feb 2013 01:12 PM PST "I still have no idea how prices are going to resolve themselves from here." ¤ Yesterday In Gold & Silver Gold had a rather strange day yesterday. After getting sold down to a new low shortly after 9:00 a.m. in Far East trading, the gold price recovered almost back to unchanged by early afternoon in Hong Kong, only to get sold down to its low of the day [around $1,638 spot] at the morning London gold fix at 10:25 a.m. GMT. From that point it rallied to its high of the day [$1,654.30 spot] at 12:30 p.m. in New York, before getting sold off going into the Comex close. From there the price recovered a hair before trading sideways into the 5:15 p.m. electronic close. Gold closed at $1,651.30 spot...up $3.00 on the day. Volume was pretty decent...around 151,000 contracts. A lot of the volume would be technical funds being blow out of their long positions by JPMorgan Chase et al 'slicing the price salami' to the down side. It was pretty much the same story in silver, with the only real difference being the high of the day, as it was set shortly after 4:00 p.m. Eastern time in electronic trading. The high tick was $31.26 spot. The low appeared to be around $30.75 spot...also at the London a.m. gold fix. Silver closed at $31.12 spot...up 17 cents on the day. Net volume was pretty light once again...around 32,500 contracts. Both Ted Butler and myself were a bit surprised that "da boyz" didn't press their advantage during the Comex trading session. They certainly had the opportunity, but passed up on it for whatever reason. Both platinum and palladium set their lows for the day at the London a.m. gold fix...but then rallied decently...and finished well up on the day. Gold finished up 0.18%....silver closed up 0.55%....platinum up 1.60%...and palladium was the winner, up 1.72% on the day. The dollar index opened on Tuesday morning in the Far East at 80.34...and then rallied to its high of the day [80.50] at 10:00 a.m. sharp in London trading...but by 10:50 a.m. in New York, the index had fallen down to 79.92...it's low tick of the day...before rallying a bit into the close. The dollar index closed down 29 basis points at 80.05. Like Monday's currency action, there was no correlation between the dollar index and the precious metal prices on Tuesday, either. Over the entire length of this bull market in precious metals, there has been little or no correlation between the dollar index and the gold price at all The gold stocks opened in the red, dipped a bit...and then took off into positive territory. They topped out at 12:30 p.m...gold's high tick of the day...before selling off a bit as the afternoon wore on. However, they did pop a bit during the last fifteen minutes of trading in New York...and the HUI finished up 0.72%. The silver shares finished mixed...and Nick Laird's Intraday Silver Sentiment Index finished up 0.33%. (Click on image to enlarge) The CME's Daily Delivery Report showed that 480 gold and 59 silver contracts were posted for delivery within the Comex-approved depositories on Thursday. In gold, the big short/issuer was Canada's own Bank of Nova Scotia with 465 contracts issued...and the two long/stoppers of note were Deutsche Bank and HSBC USA with 309 and 170 contracts respectively. In silver, all 59 contracts were issued by Jefferies...and it was mostly "all the usual suspects" on the long/stopper side. The link to yesterday's Issuers and Stoppers Report is here...and it's worth a quick look. There were no reported changes in either GLD or SLV yesterday. Over at Switzerland's Zürcher Kantonalbank...as of the close of business on February 11th...they reported a decline of 50,793 troy ounces in their gold ETF...but added 40,156 ounces of silver to their silver ETF. There was a smallish sales report from the U.S. Mint. They sold 1,500 ounces of gold eagles...1,000 one-ounce 24K gold buffaloes...and 129,500 silver eagles. Over at the Comex-approved depositories on Monday, they reported receiving 650,352 troy ounces of silver...and only shipped 1,004 ounces of the stuff [one good delivery bar] out the door. All of the deposit ended up in the new CNT Depository, which is now up to 4.81 million ounces of silver. The link to that activity is here. Yesterday I received an e-mail from Joshua Gibbons, the Guru of the SLV bar list over at the about.ag/SLV/ Internet site. Ever since silver analyst Ted Butler began to speak up about the naked short positions held in SLV shares...mostly by the large authorized participants, of which JPMorgan Chase is/was the leading suspect...more and more silver commentators are talking about it...including both Joshua and myself...and this is what Joshua had to say about the big reduction in the SLV short position. Hi Ed, "You'll probably be hearing all about this soon, but the new SLV short position was just released. It went down by 17,866,500 to 7,297,500, a drop of 10,569,000 shares (about 10,219,000 oz)." "My suspicion is that JPM had shorted exactly 10 Moz of SLV shares, to use while collecting 10 Moz of silver in their new New York vault (they deposited 10,000,998.7 oz. in that vault at the time of the 18.4 Moz SLV deposit in January), and the other 219,000 oz. of SLV short covering was just normal SLV short activity. So over time they accumulated a 10 Moz SLV short position, and also accumulated 10 Moz of silver in New York, and last month deposited the 10 Moz of silver with SLV to create 10 Moz worth of SLV shares to close out their SLV short position (still leaving 7.2 Moz worth of SLV short, some of which could belong to JPM as well)." "It does come very, very close to proving that JPM had a 10 Moz short position in SLV (and that it either was backed by silver, or they were in the process of backing it by silver). However, it does not explain the other 8.4 Moz of silver that was deposited that day, nor the 8.9 Moz of silver that was substituted (the 8.9 Moz of SLV silver in the Johnson Matthey vault was removed, and replaced with a different 8.9 Moz of silver in a different vault as part of the 18.4 Moz deposit). And 8.4 Moz deposit by itself would have qualified as one of the largest SLV deposits in several years, so there is still a part of the mystery yet to be solved. - JG" I know that Ted will have much more to say about this in his mid-week column later today. I don't have that many stories for a mid-week column...and I hope you have the time to at least skim the parts that I've cut and paste from each article. ¤ Critical Reads Growth in U.S. budget deficit slows in January The federal government reported a rare surplus for January and is on track to run its smallest annual budget deficit since President Barack Obama took office. The Treasury Department said Tuesday that the government took in a surplus of $2.9 billion in January. That's the first monthly surplus since April, a month that benefited from income tax payments. January's budget benefited from an estimated $9 billion in extra revenue from higher Social Security taxes. That helped lowered the deficit through the first four months of the budget year to $290.4 billion — nearly $60 billion lower than the same period a year ago. I'm underwhelmed...and I hope you are too, dear reader. This AP story was picked up by the finance.yahoo.com Internet site yesterday...and I thank Scott Pluschau for today's first story. The link is here. How a Rookie Excel Error Led JPMorgan to Misreport its Value at Risk for Years Just under a year ago, when JPMorgan's London Whale trading fiasco was exposed as much more than just the proverbial "tempest in a teapot", Morgan watchers were left scratching their heads over another very curious development: the dramatic surge in the company's reported VaR, which as we showed last June nearly doubled, rising by some 93% year over year, a glaring contrast to what the other banks were reporting to be doing. The increase in CIO average VaR was due to changes in the synthetic credit portfolio held by CIO as part of its management of structural and other risks arising from the Firm's on-going business activities." Keep the bolded sentence in mind, because as it turns out it is nothing but a euphemism for, drum roll, epic, amateur Excel error! This Zero Hedge story from yesterday is an amazing read...and is another article from the top drawer of the "You Can't Make This Stuff Up" filing cabinet. It's a must read as well...and it's courtesy of West Virginia reader Elliot Simon. The link is here. Stocks Are Set for a Possible Repeat of 1987! Says Marc Faber "Either the market is going to correct more meaningfully now or we have a shallow correction and a continuously rising market until July or August," Faber told me via phone from Thailand. If stocks don't pullback soon, he says we risk a repeat of 1987 when stocks rallied 40% into summer only to collapse 41% in 2 months. "In March of 2009 everything looked horrible, now nobody can find a reason why stocks could go down," Faber claims. "We ask that you should buy stocks when everything looks horrible, you shouldn't rush to buy them when everything looks perfect." The problem is that it's hard to find anyone claiming the environment is perfect. Even the theme running under the reports of "the masses" buying stocks is that it's a cue to sell, not buy. This 3:45 minute telephone interview was posted on the finance.yahoo.com Internet site yesterday...and there's a written transcript as well. The story is courtesy of David Ball...and the link is here. 'American leaders do believe in the invulnerability of the dollar system, but they are misguided' - James Rickards In an exclusive interview with the Voice of Russia, James Rickards talks about currency wars, critical dynamics of monetary policy and the future of the US dollar. James Rickards is the author of the national bestseller, Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis and a partner in Tangent Capital Partners, a merchant bank based in New York. It's a Q&A in written form...and it was posted on the English version of the ruvr.ru Internet site on Monday...and I thank Harold Jacobsen for digging it up on our behalf. The link is here. Why America Should Default and You Should Live Abroad: Q&A with Doug Casey "I recommend defaulting on the debt for several reasons," explains New York Times' best-selling author, investment strategist, and libertarian commentator Doug Casey. "Perhaps the best one is that I don't think it's correct to make the next several generations of Americans indentured servants" His new book, Totally Incorrect, is a collection of conversations with Louis James that explore the ways in which government policy and centralized power threaten cultural and economic progress. In a series of engaging and wide-ranging dialogues, Casey and James talk about everything from the Great Depression, to drug use, to the Roman Empire. Reason TV's Nick Gillespie sat down with Casey to discuss why America should default on its debt, why he spends most of his time in Argentina these days, and the importance of self-reliance and free-market principles. This 6:04 minute video interview was posted on the reason.com Internet site yesterday...and it's definitely worth watching. The link is here. G7 nations pledge to coordinate their currency market rigging They say they want markets to value currencies but warn against "excessive volatility and disorderly movements in exchange rates" and pledge "to continue to consult closely on exchange markets and cooperate as appropriate." That is, they will let markets work except when markets become inconveniently "excessive" and "disorderly" and then they will coordinate their market rigging. They won't intervene except when they do. This is all doubletalk. The above commentary was by Chris Powell...and was the preamble to the very short Reuters story on the G7 statement on exchange rates. It was posted on the gata.org Internet site yesterday...and the link is here. Barclays cuts 3,700 jobs in overhaul to restore reputation Antony Jenkins, chief executive of Barclays, said the cuts showed his plans for change at the bank were not mere "window dressing or PR" as he pointed to the financial cost of exiting controversial businesses. The bank confirmed it would shut its controversial structured capital markets (SCM) unit, responsible for giving tax advice to the bank's wealthy clients, while all speculative trading in agricultural commodities would be ended. [One has to wonder what sort of Comex positions they hold in the precious metals. - Ed] Mr Jenkins said Barclays had taken a decision to close operations it no longer considered "compatible" with its business and ethics. This story was posted on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site last evening GMT...and the link is here. The Italian Patient: Resisting Berlusconi's Charms Silvio Berlusconi may be back with his customary bombastic campaign promises. But will the Italians bite? If they do, it could spell doom for the country. If they don't, Italy's tradition of political instability might return anyway. Berlusconi's return to the political arena is a shock. It would be his sixth candidacy, his "last great political battle," as he calls it. He will be 77 this year and is currently defending himself in two court cases. It's been hardly a year since the rating agencies downgraded Italy's credit rating because of its unstable political situation, and Berlusconi submitted his resignation on Nov. 12, 2011. But now the mummy has returned, and has rapidly become the most important personality in the pending general election. A remark by Berlusconi, like the one he made on Sunday, is enough to cause the markets to plunge and the risk premiums for Italian sovereign bonds to rise. It is enough to trigger the return of worry about the Italian patient, the fear of contagion, the euro crisis and political self-paralysis -- in short, the fear of the former Italy. The original title to this article was "Italian election campaign foreshadows return to politics as usual". It was posted on the German website spiegel.de yesterday...and I thank Roy Stephens for sending it. The link is here. Prosecuting the Messenger: Chief Greek Statistician Threatened with Jail He was hired to bring Greece's debt statistics in line with European norms. Now, chief statistician Andreas Georgiou faces jail time for allegedly producing inflated sovereign debt numbers. He says he was merely being honest, and he has plenty of support in Europe. When Georgiou decided in the summer of 2010 to take over leadership of the revamped, newly independent Greek statistics service ELSTAT, he never imagined that the position could land him a jail sentence. But at the end of January, felony charges were filed against Georgiou and two senior ELSTAT staffers for allegedly inflating the 2009 deficit. In other words, at a time when the rest of the world was furious that Greece had artificially improved the country's budget statistics, Greek prosecutors are accusing Georgiou of doing the opposite. Prosecutors acted after a 15-month investigation into allegations made by a former ELSTAT board member. If found guilty, Georgiou faces five to 10 years in prison. This is another spiegel.de offering from yesterday...and once again courtesy of Roy Stephens. The link is here. Timbuktu after the Liberation: Malians Fear Return of Islamists The French have successfully liberated Timbuktu, but they also intend to withdraw soon. Locals are now sharing their stories about the period of brutal Islamist control, but also their worries that the reign of terror could soon return. The French combat force, Groupement tactique interarmes, which captured Timbuktu in a surprise attack about two weeks ago, is now withdrawing. The 500-man unit is to be redeployed in the direction of Gao, leaving only a small military outpost behind in Timbuktu. Colonel Gèze, a muscular man with an angular face, set up his headquarters in a camouflage tent across from the runway. Following the airstrikes by the French Air Force, his men entered Timbuktu without meeting any resistance. It was almost too simple. The colonel still feels a little uneasy about their speedy victory. Gèze can't say how many people were killed in the air strikes. His soldiers didn't take any prisoners, either. Still, even though the jihadists have left Timbuktu, Gèze hasn't defeated them. Perhaps they have gone to Mauritania or Algeria. The officer shrugs his shoulders. "We're keeping our eyes and ears peeled and are questioning our informants," he says. "The Islamists have to be hiding out somewhere." This 2-page article is also from the spiegel.de Internet site yesterday afternoon...and my thanks go out to Roy Stephens once again. It's worth reading if you have the time...and the link is here. Russia will never involve itself in 'another Afghanistan' - Lavrov The head of the Foreign Ministry said Russia has no intention of deploying its military to the Middle East or North Africa, where social and political crisis is rampant, opting instead to work diplomatically with legitimate governments. ­"This is my answer to those who wonder why we are not fighting for our positions," Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on the "Sunday Night with Solovyov" program. "We will not be fighting for our positions…and creating 'another Afghanistan' for ourselves. Never, under no circumstances!" While emphasizing the importance of sovereign states being able to resolve their internal problems without outside interference – specifically military interference – the minister emphasized that Russia would work with various opposition groups to consider the discontent against "the lengthy tenure of one family, or the absence of civil liberties – a common occurrence in many countries of the region, including monarchies." This story was posted on the Russia Today website sometime on Monday...and I thank Roy Stephens for his final offering in today's column. The link is here. Japan's economic minister wants Nikkei to surge 17% to 13,000 by March Economic and fiscal policy minister Akira Amari said Saturday the government will step up economic recovery efforts so that the benchmark Nikkei index jumps an additional 17 percent to 13,000 points by the end of March. "It will be important to show our mettle and see the Nikkei reach the 13,000 mark by the end of the fiscal year (March 31)," Amari said in a speech. The Nikkei 225 stock average, which last week climbed to its highest level since September 2008, finished at 11,153.16 on Friday. "We want to continue taking (new) steps to help stock prices rise" further, Amari stressed, referring to the core policies of the Liberal Democratic Party administration — the promotion of bold monetary easing, fiscal spending and greater private sector investment. Wow! I read what he said...and I still don't believe it. The free markets are done for. This story was filed from Yokohama yesterday...and was posted on the japantimes.co.jp Internet site. I found it yesterday's edition of the King Report. The link is here. It a little while to load. Three King World News Blogs The first is with James Turk...and it's headlined "Last Piece Now in Place to Trigger Hyperinflation". The second blog is with Michael Pento...and it's entitled "Gold Bears Out of Time and About to Pay the Ultimate Price". And lastly is Richard Russell. It bears the title "History About to Repeat - Hang on to Gold". Will Currency Wars End With a Return to the Gold Standard? Bloomberg's Trish Regan and Adam Johnson interviewed TCW Group's Komal Sri-Kumar and Bank of New York Mellon's Michael Woolfolk about the risks from currency wars on Bloomberg Television's "Street Smart." Trish Regan asks whether there is a danger that "we have massive inflation worldwide for years to come?" The answer is yes and both agree that inflation is a real risk as is a loss of credibility by central banks. Komal Sri-Kumar is asked what the solution is and is asked about his Op-Ed in the Financial Times in which he calls for a return to a gold standard. He replies that a gold standard today would be no different to "how good it was from 1945 to 1971." This article was posted on the zerohedge.com Internet site yesterday...and I consider it a must read. I thank Manitoba reader Ulrike Marx for bringing it to my attention...and now to yours. The link is here. Russia may become No. 3 gold miner by 2015 Increased output by Russia could see it surpass the United States as the world's third largest gold miner by 2015, Sergei Kashuba, head of the Russian Gold Industrialists' Union, said on Tuesday. Russia has the world

Shanghai Gold Exchange benchmark contract volume jumps to record Posted: 22 Feb 2013 01:12 PM PST Shanghai Gold Exchange benchmark contract volume jumps to record Gold volumes for the benchmark cash contract on the Shanghai Gold Exchange climbed to a record today as the market re-opened after a weeklong break and lower prices lured buyers. The volume for bullion of 99.99 percent purity exceeded 22,000 kilograms (22 metric tons), according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Prices dropped 2.8 percent to 327.25 yuan a gram ($1,630.29 an ounce) as of 5:04 p.m. Singapore time. Markets were closed last week for the Lunar New Year holiday. "Chinese investors returned to the market today after the holiday, and the slump in gold prices in the past week provided great incentive for buying as many Chinese are still holding a bullish outlook on gold," Qu Mingyu, a trader at Bank of China Ltd., the nation's fourth-largest lender by assets, said by phone from Shanghai today. This short Bloomberg piece showed up on their website in the wee hours of Monday morning Mountain Standard Time...and the link is here.

Russian Policy Study Group Notes GATA's Exposure of Gold Price Suppression Posted: 22 Feb 2013 01:12 PM PST "The quick take-downs of both gold and silver after the London p.m. gold fix were duly noted." ¤ Yesterday In Gold & Silver The gold price did nothing yesterday...and the tiny rally that developed in New York trading after the London p.m. gold fix in, wasn't allowed to amount to much...and got sold off during the following few hours, before trading sideways into the close. Gold finished the Friday session at $1,667.20 spot...down $3.80 on the day. Volume was very light...around 94,000 contracts. The silver price was more 'volatile'...but traded in exactly the same pattern as gold...with the price spike after the London p.m. gold fix being treated even more harshly than the sell-off that accompanied gold's rally at the same time. From there, silver traded sideways into the close. Silver finished the Friday session at $31.43 spot...down 3 cents from Thursday. Net volume was very light at around 27,000 contracts. The dollar index opened at 80.24 in Far East trading on their Friday...and held more or less steady until 3:00 p.m. in Hong Kong...and then slide to its low of the day [79.95] at noon in London. Then the index rallied back to unchanged by 1:00 p.m. in New York before trading sideways into the close. The index closed almost where it started that day...80.23. Nothing to see here, folks...please move along. The gold stocks pretty much followed the gold price action yesterday. They hit their high when gold hit its high...and then sold off when the gold price reversed itself. The HUI closed down 0.50%. The silver stocks finished mostly in the green...and Nick Laird's Intraday Silver Sentiment Index...which has returned from the disabled list...closed up 0.35%. (Click on image to enlarge) The regular Silver Sentiment Index is below...showing the longer-term trend. (Click on image to enlarge) The CME's Daily Delivery Report showed that zero gold and 60 silver contracts were posted for delivery within the Comex-approved depositories on Tuesday. Jefferies was the short/issuer on all 60 contracts...and the 'usual suspects' were biggest long/stoppers. The link to yesterday's Issuers and Stoppers Report is here. After a deposit in GLD on Thursday, there was a withdrawal of 96,797 troy ounces on Friday. But the big surprise was SLV. When I typed this paragraph shortly before midnight Eastern time last night, the SLV website showed no change. Now that I'm editing this column at 5:40 a.m. Eastern time, I decided to check to see if the site had been updated...and it had. It showed that 1,547,142 troy ounces of silver had been deposited by an authorized participant. Why SLV is sometimes being updated around midnight Eastern time is a big mystery to me. I was hoping that the short positions in these two ETFs would have been updated on the shortsqueeze.com Internet site yesterday evening but, alas, that was not to be. There was a smallish sales report from the U.S. Mint. They sold 1,500 ounces of gold eagles...1,000 one-ounce 24K gold buffaloes...and a very decent 206,000 silver eagles. Month-to-date the mint has sold 34,500 ounces of gold eagles...1,000 one-ounce 24K gold buffaloes...and 979,500 silver eagles. Based on these numbers, the silver/gold sales ratio for February to date is just under 28 to 1. It was another action-packed day over at the Comex-approved depositories on Thursday. They reported receiving 1,202,121 troy ounces of silver...and shipped 227,050 troy ounces out the door. The link to that activity is here. The Commitment of Traders Report...for positions held at the close of Comex trading on Tuesday...showed that the Commercial net short positions in both metals increased during the reporting week. In silver, the Commercial net short position increased by 1,679 contracts...and now sits at 259.7 million ounces. The 'Big 4' traders in silver are short 265.1 million ounces...a bit over 100% of the above-mentioned Commercial net short position. The next '5 through 8' traders are short an additional 55.3 million ounces. As far as the concentration of these short positions is concerned, the 'Big 4' are short 52.4% of the entire Comex futures market in silver on a net basis. The '5 through 8' traders are short an additional 10.9 percentage points. So the 'Big 8' are short 63.3% of the entire Comex futures market on a net basis...and those are minimum percentages. Ted Butler pointed out that, according to his calculations, JPMorgan Chase is short 35,000 Comex silver contracts all by itself...and that calculates out to about 34.5% of the entire Comex silver market. One entity short that much of one commodity...what the #%&!$ is the CFTC waiting for? Then, to make matters worse...and this is my personal opinion...I think that the second big short in the silver market is the Bank of Nova Scotia, through their bullion division Scotia Mocatta...and they are short about 11 percent of the entire Comex silver market. Despite polite enquiries, I can't get them to admit to it...but they didn't say no...and I given them ample opportunity to do so. I'm also of the opinion that the number three silver short holder on the Comex is HSBC USA...but their position would be around 5% of the total Comex futures market in silver. Based on these educated assumptions, of the 41 traders on the short side of the Commercial category, three of them are short about 50% of the entire Comex silver market...and the short positions of the other thirty-eight traders in that category, are immaterial. In gold, the Commercial net short position increased by 7,510 contracts...and now sits at 174,600 contracts, or 17.46 million ounces. The 'Big 4' are short 10.51 million ounces of gold...and the '5 through 8' traders are short an additional 5.85 million ounces. So the 'Big 8' in total are short 16.36 million ounces of gold...93.7% of the Commercial net short position. As far as concentration goes, the 'Big 4' are short 29.6% of the entire Comex futures market in gold...and the '5 through 8' are short an additional 16.4% of the Comex futures market. In total, the 'Big 8' are short 46.0% of the entire Comex futures market in gold on a net basis. Here's Nick Laird's "Days to Cover Short Positions" in all world commodities. (Click on image to enlarge) The CFTC also published the February Bank Participation Report...and the data contained in that is extracted from the above-mentioned Commitment of Traders Report. In silver, it showed that less than four [probably three] U.S. banks are net short 40,192 Comex silver contracts...about 7,900 contracts higher than January's BPR. And don't forget that Ted mentioned that JPMorgan Chase is short 35,000 Comex contracts...and it's my guess that HSBC USA is short about 5,000 Comex contracts...and the tiny balance of about 200 contracts would belong to Citi, I believe. The 14 non-U.S. banks are net short 15,370 Comex contracts, an increase of about 500 contracts from the January report. My estimation is that Scotia Bank holds about 11,000 of those 15,370 short contracts...so that leaves the remaining 13 non-U.S. banks holding about 4,370 Comex contracts short between them. These are immaterial positions when you divide them up more or less equally. [Note: If the Bank of Nova Scotia wishes to deny that they are the new "Non-U.S. Bank" mentioned on the Bank Participation Report home page...I'd be more than happy to print a retraction...and an apology.] In gold, 4 U.S. banks are net short 69,300 Comex contracts. This is a 13,000 contract decline [1.3 million ounces] since the January BPR...and three of those four U.S. banks just mentioned would be the 'Big 3' U.S. banks short the Comex silver market as well. There are 20 non-U.S. banks short 48,734 Comex contracts in gold...and that's an increase of about 2,900 contracts since the January BPR...or 290,000 ounces of gold. Just for fun, here's the Reader's Digest version of the Bank Participation Report for both platinum and palladium. In platinum, 17 banks are long 2,292 Comex contracts...and short 26,286 Comex contracts. In palladium, 17 banks are long 991 contracts and short 13,667 contracts. The lion's share of the short positions in both platinum and palladium are held by less than four U.S. Banks. And just as a matter of interest, there are 17 banks in total holding short positions in the Comex silver market as well. One has to wonder whether they are the same 17 banks in all three metals. Here are the Bank Participation Reports for all four precious metals in chart form. Note the monstrous short positions held by the 3 [or 4] U.S. Banks in all four metals....and note the appearance of Scotiabank in October on silver's chart. Charts #4 and #5 from each one are the most important...and the 'click to enlarge' feature is a must here. (Click on image to enlarge) (Click on image to enlarge) (Click on image to enlarge) (Click on image to enlarge) I've cut the stories down to a bare minimum for a Saturday...and I hope you can find the time over what's left of your weekend to read the ones that interest you. ¤ Critical Reads Boeing New Aircraft Orders Implode From 183 to Just 2 in January After the now several week old exploding battery fiasco, Boeing is nowhere closer to resolving the recurring problem for its appropriately renamed Nightmareliner. But the worst for the company may be yet ahead: as the following chart from Stone McCarthy shows, January new aircraft orders collapsed from 183 in December to a meaningless 2 in January: a seasonally strong month, with some 150 orders a year ago, and more weakness to come as Boeing just warned its first Norwegian delivery due in April may be delayed. This story was posted on the zerohedge.com Internet site yesterday...and I thank "David in California" for sending it. There are a couple of charts that are worth looking at...and the link is here. U.S. Economy likely grew in fourth quarter [on back of gold sales] The economy likely expanded slightly in the fourth quarter as higher exports and a slump in oil imports narrowed the trade gap, suggesting a surprise drop in economic output reported last week was overstated. The U.S. report showed the country's trade gap narrowed to $38.5 billion in December, which was a much smaller deficit than analysts polled by Reuters had expected. U.S. exports increased $8.6 billion in December, boosted by sales of industrial supplies, including a $1.2 billion rise of non-monetary gold. The above paragraph was buried close to the bottom in this Reuters story that was posted on the finance.yahoo.com Internet site yesterday. I thank "David in California" for bringing this very interesting news tidbit to our attention...and the link is here. Justice Department, States Weigh Action Against Moody's, Sources Tell Reuters The U.S. Justice Department and multiple states are discussing also suing Moody's Corp. for defrauding investors, according to people familiar with the matter, but any such move will likely wait until a similar lawsuit against rival Standard and Poor's is tested in the courts. Inquiries into Moody's are in the early stages, largely because state and federal authorities have dedicated more resources to the S&P lawsuit, said the sources, who were not authorized to speak publicly about enforcement discussions. Moody's spokesman Michael Adler and Justice Department spokeswoman Adora Andy declined to comment for this story. This Reuters story was posted on the moneynews.com Internet site early yesterday morning Eastern time...and the link is here. Why gasoline prices are headed even higher Gasoline prices at the pump have climbed every day for the past 21 days — and they're not going to let up anytime soon. On Thursday, the average U.S. price for a gallon of regular gasoline stood at $3.555, making it the most expensive average ever for that day and the highest level since Oct. 26 of last year, according to AAA. The price has risen 26.3 cents, or about 8%, this year, steeper than the 6.2% increase for the same period in 2012 and 1.6% rise for the same period in 2011, according to the motorist and leisure travel group. And as the gasoline market set all sorts of milestones, analysts offered more reasons why prices are headed even higher over the next few months. This marketwatch.com story from early yesterday morning was sent to me by West Virginia reader Elliot Simon...and the link is here. John Williams: How to Survive the Illusion of Recovery There is no economic recovery, and there are no signs that a recovery is coming, says Shadowstats.com author John Williams. In this Gold Report interview, he blames mal-adjusted inflation statistics for creating an alternate reality that overestimates economic activity in a way that is unsustainable. Williams warns that eventually the painful truth will be so difficult that even government manipulation won't be able to deny it and that is when hyperinflation will take its toll on those who have not taken his advice for preserving purchasing power and securing wealth. This longish interview was posted on theaureport.com Internet site yesterday...and it's well worth the read. The link is here. Doug Noland: New Bull or Bigger Ro, Ro? The inevitable upshot to this unwieldy "risk on, risk off" and New Age Policy Asymmetry is unanchored global liquidity and general currency market instability. The Draghi and Bernanke Plans incited re-risking, re-leveraging and an absolute global market liquidity bonanza. Many now talk openly of "currency wars" – recalling the destabilizing "beggar thy neighbor" Credit/currency devaluations from the Depression era. Watching their moribund economies, European leaders are getting antsy. And the elevated euro (weak dollar and yen) was the target of strong words this past week from French President Hollande: "We can't let the euro fluctuate according to the mood of the market. We have to act at the international level to assert our interests… We have to determine for the medium term an exchange-rate level that appears most realistic, that is most in line with the state of our real economies." Doug Noland is a must read every Friday...and his commentary at the prudentbear.com Internet site yesterday evening is no exception. I thank reader U.D. for sliding it into my in-box last night...and the link is here. America's Baby Bust The nation's falling fertility rate is the root cause of many of our problems. And it's only getting worse. For more than three decades, Chinese women have been subjected to their country's brutal one-child policy. Those who try to have more children have been subjected to fines and forced abortions. Their houses have been razed and their husbands fired from their jobs. As a result, Chinese women have a fertility rate of 1.54. Here in America, white, college-educated women—a good proxy for the middle class—have a fertility rate of 1.6. America has its very own one-child policy. And we have chosen it for ourselves. Forget the debt ceiling. Forget the fiscal cliff, the sequestration cliff and the entitlement cliff. Those are all just symptoms. What America really faces is a demographic cliff: The root cause of most of our problems is our declining fertility rate. The fertility rate is the number of children an average woman bears over the course of her life. The replacement rate is 2.1. If the average woman has more children than that, population grows. Fewer, and it contracts. Today, America's total fertility rate is 1.93, according to the latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; it hasn't been above the replacement rate in a sustained way since the early 1970s. This longish essay was posted on The Wall Street Journal website last Saturday...and it's definitely weekend reading material...but it's also must read weekend reading material. The link is here. Podcast: James Rickards on Currency Wars Investors and economists concerned about the current central bank battle to weaken their currencies might want to get comfortable, because this so-called "currency war" isn't ending any time soon, warns veteran financier and author of the 2011 book "Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis" James Rickards. In an interview on the DJ FX Trader podcast, Rickards says the continuing currency battle will likely last until 2014 or 2015, and in the meantime rising inflation across the globe remains a key risk. "We're not in currency wars all the time, but when we are they tend to last for a very long time," he says. This podcast was posted on The Wall Street Journal's Internet site on Thursday morning. The podcast runs just over 14 minutes...and Mr. Rickards part lasts for about 7:50 minutes. I thank Elliot Simon for bringing it to our attention...and the link is here. Global currency war could get nastier, warns Brazil's Mantega The global "currency war" could get even worse if Europe joins the fray, says the man widely credited with coining the term. Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega told Reuters [that] European countries should focus on reviving their economies with more investments, rather than trying to weaken the euro to protects jobs as France has suggested ahead of next week's meeting of G20 economic powers. "We will continue to have this currency problem unless the global economy takes off," Mantega said in an interview late Thursday. "The solution here is to make their economies more dynamic and jolt them out of stagnation." More than two years ago Mantega used the term "currency wars" to describe the series of competitive devaluations adopted by rich nations to bolster their exports amid the global slowdown to the detriment of emerging market nations. This Reuters piece was filed from Brasilia mid-morning Eastern time yesterday...and I thank Manitoba reader Ulrike Marx for sending it along. The link is here. Venezuela devalues currency by 32% Venezuela devalued its bolivar currency to 6.3 per dollar from 4.3 per dollar, the finance minister said today, in a widely expected move to shore up government finances after blowout government spending last year. The measure will help ease a shortage of dollars that has crimped imports and left many supermarkets barren of staples such as flour or sugar. It is also seen pushing up consumer prices in the import-dependent OPEC nation that already has one of Latin America's highest inflation rates. Venezuela has maintained exchange controls on the bolivar for a decade under which importers and travelers must seek dollars through a state currency board, or buy them on an illegal black market where greenbacks fetch nearly four times the official rate. I would expect Argentina to soon follow suit. I borrowed this Reuters story from a GATA release yesterday, but the first person through the door with it was Phil Barlett...and the link is here. Iceland, Fervent Prosecutor of Bankers, Sees Meager Returns "Greed is not a crime. But the question is: where does greed lead?" said Olafur Hauksson, a special prosecutor in Reykjavik. As chief of police in a tiny fishing town for 11 years, Olafur Hauksson developed what he thought was a basic understanding of the criminal mind. The typical lawbreaker, he said, recalling his many encounters with small-time criminals, "clearly knows that he crossed the line" and generally sees "the difference between right and wrong." Today, the burly, 48-year-old former policeman is struggling with a very different sort of suspect. Reassigned to Reykjavik, the Icelandic capital, to lead what has become one of the world's most sweeping investigation into the bankers whose actions contributed to the global financial crisis in 2008, Mr. Hauksson now faces suspects who "are not aware of when they crossed the line" and "defend their actions every step of the way." This 2-page background story, filed from Reykjavik, was posted on The New York Times website last Saturday...and has been sitting in my in-box since then. I thank Phil Barlett for his second offering in a row...and the link is here. Cameron triumphs as European leaders agree on first-ever budget cut The deal is expected to set members' total payments to the EU for 2014-20 at Euro 908.4 billion or £770 billion. For the last seven-year spending round, payments were set at £800 billion, and the new agreement marks the first time the EU's multi-year budget has fallen. The agreement was sealed shortly after 4pm in Brussels, after more than 24-hours of non-stop talks, including an all-night negotiation during which Mr Cameron drank numerous espressos and chewed sugary gum sweets. The deal was announced on Twitter by Herman van Rumpoy, the EU president. He wrote: "Deal done! #euco has agreed on #MFF for the rest of the decade. Worth waiting for." Big hairy deal. The E.U. should be abandoned anyway...and it will be interesting to see if the organization outlasts its spending plans. This story was posted on The Telegraph's website early yesterday afternoon GMT...and is courtesy of Roy Stephens. The link is here. Pepe Escobar: The sound of Munich Let's start with US Vice President Joe Biden: "The United States is a Pacific power. And the world's greatest military alliance [the North Atlantic Treaty Organization] helps make us an Atlantic power as

Putin Turns Black Gold Into Bullion as Russia Out-buys the World Posted: 22 Feb 2013 01:12 PM PST "Well, it's a chart pattern that you've seen before...and comes as no surprise to me." ¤ Yesterday In Gold & Silver The gold price did nothing in Far East Trading on their Monday...and volume was the lowest that I can remember for that time of day. Gold traded ruler flat until shortly after the London open...and then the selling pressure began. It came in three stages...and after each sell-off, there was a tiny rally before the selling began anew. But the moment that the Comex opened, the bid disappeared...and the gold price dropped about fourteen bucks in as many minutes. The subsequent rally wasn't allowed to get far...and the gold price chopped sideways for the rest of the day. The high tick was around $1,678 spot...and that came shortly after trading began early Monday morning in the Far East...and the low [$1,642.80 spot] came about fifteen minutes after the Comex open. Gold closed the Monday session at $1,648.30 spot...down $18.90 on the day. Volume was pretty heavy...around 200,000 contracts. The price action in silver was very similar to gold's price action, with the only significant difference being that silver's low tick [$30.74 spot] came during the New York lunch hour. The rally off that low got sold down during the electronic trading session. Silver closed at $30.95 spot...down 48 cents. Once the roll-overs out of the March contract were deducted, silver's net volume was surprisingly light...around 30,500 contracts. Here's the New York Spot Silver [Bid] chart on its own. Platinum traded ruler flat until the Comex open...as did palladium. But once trading started in New York, platinum got sold down...and platinum closed higher on the day. The dollar index opened in New York on Sunday night at 80.23...and then flopped around as the Monday trading day progressed...and closed at 80.34...up 11 basis points. The high tick was just a hair under 80.40...the first time at 9:40 a.m. Eastern...and the last time at the close of trading. Of course it nearly goes without saying that the precious metal price action had nothing to do with what was going on in the currency markets...as it was all JPMorgan et al. The gold stocks got sold down about two percent right a the open...with the lows of the day coming at gold's low...around 12:15 p.m. in New York. The subsequent rally was rather a tepid affair...and even it got sold down in the last thirty minutes of trading. The HUI finished the Monday trading session down 1.90%. Except for one stock that I track, all the silver equities got sold off pretty hard...the junior producers in particular. The seven stocks that make up Nick Laird's Intraday Silver Sentiment Index had a slightly better time of it...as the ISSI closed down only 1.84%. (Click on image to enlarge) The CME's Daily Delivery Report showed that only 91 gold and 6 silver contracts were posted for delivery on Wednesday within the Comex-approved depositories. Except for ABN Amro, it was 'all the usual suspects' in gold. The link to yesterday's Issuers and Stoppers Report is here. As of 9:36 p.m. Eastern time last night, there were no reported changes in either GLD or SLV. However, late last night the new short interest numbers for both SLV and GLD were posted on the shortsqueeeze.com Internet site...and they were amazing. In SLV, the short interest collapsed by 59.16%. Wow! The naked short position fell from 17.86 million shares/ounces, all the way down to 7.30 million shares/ounces. That leaves about 2.16% of the outstanding SLV shares held naked short. It's obvious that a large chunk of that 18.4 million ounces that was deposited back on January 16th was used to pay down that short position...and I'd be happy to bet a fair chunk of money that it was JPMorgan Chase. In GLD the short interest fell by 7.14%...from 21.58 million shares, down to 20.04 million shares. The current short position is a hair over 2 million ounces...and about 4.69% of the outstanding shares. The U.S. Mint had a sales report yesterday. They didn't sell any gold, but did report selling another 329,500 silver eagles. Over at the Comex-approved depositories on Friday, they reported receiving 198,937 troy ounces of silver...and shipped 451,777 troy ounces out the door. The link to that activity is here. Here's a chart that Washington state reader S.A. sent me yesterday...and it's self-explanatory. (Click on image to enlarge) Below is a short home video clip from Ben Bernanke's childhood...and I thank Roy Stephens for sharing it. I have the usual number of stories for a Tuesday, which is quite a few...and I'll happily leave the final edit up to you. ¤ Critical Reads China Eclipses U.S. as Biggest Trading Nation U.S. exports and imports of goods last year totaled $3.82 trillion, the U.S. Commerce Department said last week. China's customs administration reported last month that the country's trade in goods in 2012 amounted to $3.87 trillion. China's growing influence in global commerce threatens to disrupt regional trading blocs as it becomes the most important commercial partner for some countries. Germany may export twice as much to China by the end of the decade as it does to France, estimated Goldman Sachs Group Inc.'s Jim O'Neill. "For so many countries around the world, China is becoming rapidly the most important bilateral trade partner," O'Neill, chairman of Goldman Sachs's asset management division and the economist who bound Brazil to Russia, India and China to form the BRIC investing strategy, said in a telephone interview. "At this kind of pace by the end of the decade many European countries will be doing more individual trade with China than with bilateral partners in Europe." This article appeared on the Bloomberg website early on Sunday morning Mountain time...and the first person through the door with it was "Nick G"...and the link is here. New York Sun: The state of the dollar As President Obama prepares to deliver his State of the Union address tonight, the New York Sun says the state of the dollar should overwhelm all other subjects. The Sun says: "Particularly in an age of fiat money, where there is no gold or silver backing for our national currency and the only basis of it is the economic good fortune of the nation ... well, particularly in such an age, the state of the dollar can be seen as a proxy for the state of the Union itself. If so, the state of the Union is at a historic low." This short editorial was posted on the nysun.com Internet site yesterday...and I plucked it from a GATA release yesterday. It's definitely worth reading...and the link is here. Households On Food Stamps Rise To New Record Since Obama's inauguration, the US has generated just 841,000 jobs through November 2012, a number more than dwarfed by the 17.3 million new food stamps and disability recipients added to the rolls in the past 4 years. And since the start of the depression in December 2007, America has seen those on food stamps and disability increase by 21.8 million, while losing 3.6 million jobs. End result: total number of food stamps recipients as of November: 47.7 million, an increase of 141,000 from the prior month, and reversing the brief downturn in October, while total US households on food stamps just hit an all time record of 23,017,768, an increase of 73,952 from the prior month. The cost to the government to keep these 23 million households content and not rising up? $281.21 per month per household. This Zero Hedge piece from yesterday has three excellent charts embedded...and I thank Marshall Angeles for sending it along. The link is here. Yellen Says Higher Rates Not Assured After Thresholds Hit Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Janet Yellen said the central bank may hold the benchmark lending rate near zero even if unemployment and inflation hit its near-term policy targets. The Federal Open Market Committee said in December it will hold the main interest rate in a range of zero to 0.25 percent so long as inflation isn't forecast to rise to more than 2.5 percent in one to two years and unemployment remains above 6.5 percent. On Monday, Yellen said those objectives are "thresholds for possible action, not triggers that will necessarily prompt an immediate increase" in the FOMC's target rate. "When one of these thresholds is crossed, action is possible but not assured," she said in a speech to the AFL-CIO in Washington. Well, dear reader, that pretty much guarantees hyperinflation, as that's the only thing that will trigger a big change in consumer spending and investing habits...when the sheeple finally realize that the Fed and their own government are going to destroy the dollar. Then it will become, spend it or watch it's purchasing power disappear literally overnight. This Bloomberg story was posted on their Internet site early yesterday afternoon Mountain Time...and I thank Manitoba reader Ulrike Marx for bringing it to our attention. It's worth reading...and the link is here. Venezuelan devaluation sparks panic buying Panic buyers thronged Venezuelan shops over the carnival weekend after the government of Hugo Chavez announced a surprise devaluation that analysts said was overdue but would only partly right the listing economy. Domestic appliances such as fridges and cookers were in particularly high demand as Venezuelans snapped up goods imported at the now-defunct exchange rate of 4.3 bolivars per dollar. From now on they will be imported at 6.3 bolivars per dollar. Opposition politicians seized on what is Venezuela's fifth devaluation since strict currency controls were introduced in 2003, criticising the socialist government for springing an International Monetary Fund-style adjustment package on the country and quietly announcing it on Friday while people headed for the beach over the holiday. This article showed up on the Financial Times website on Sunday...and is posted in the clear in this GATA release. The link is here. Days After Freezing Prices, Argentina Bans All Advertising A week after Argentina resorted to every failing authoritarian government's last ditch measure to (briefly) control inflation before runaway prices flood the nation and result in political and social upheaval, namely freezing retail prices - a decision which never has a happy ending, the country is pressing on through the rabbit hole and in the latest stunner of a government decree (which like Venezuela yesterday is merely a harbinger of what is coming everywhere else), has banned advertising in the Argentina's newspapers in an attempt to weaken what's left of a private, independent media, and to punish those who don't comply with the government's propaganda. This story was posted on the Zero Hedge website early on Saturday...and I thank Marshall Angeles for sending it. The link is here. The Fed's Bailout of Europe Continues With Record $237 Billion Injected into Foreign Banks in Past Month Last weekend Zero Hedge once again broke the news that just like back in June 2011, when as part of the launch of QE2 we demonstrated that all the incremental cash resulting form the $600 billion surge in the Fed's excess reserves, had gone not to domestically-chartered US banks, but to subsidiaries of foreign banks operating on US soil. in the past 4 weeks, the Fed has injected a record $237 billion of cash into foreign banks with access to the Fed's excess reserves: a number greater than both the cash influx surge seen after the Lehman collapse, and faster and more acute than the massive build up of cash during the spring and summer of 2011 when all the Fed's brand new QE2 cash was once again, solely used to overfund European bank cash. This Zero Hedge article from Saturday is an amazing read, but should come as no surprise. The Fed has been the world's lender of last resort for a long time now. I thank reader U.D. for sending me this story. The link is here. G-7 Said to Discuss Statement to Calm Currency War Concern The Group of Seven nations are considering saying they won't target exchange rates when setting policy as they try to calm concern the world is on the brink of a currency war, two officials from G-7 countries said. Finance officials from the world's key industrial economies have drafted a statement on currencies now being reviewed by senior policy makers, they said on condition of anonymity. The current wording, which still may be changed, combines the traditional backing for market-set exchange rates with a new line that governments don't direct fiscal or monetary policy at driving currencies, one aide said. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's push for more aggressive monetary policy has raised concern abroad that his government is directly seeking to weaken the yen, something it denies. In the talks, Japan has questioned the statement's contents -- which would mark a strengthening in rhetoric from the G-7's last joint comment in 2011 -- as it doesn't want to be singled out for criticism, another official from a G-7 nation said, also on the basis they not be named. Talk is cheap...and means nothing. I don't even know why they're bothering. I guess they have to look like they're doing something. This Bloomberg story was filed from London early yesterday afternoon...and it's courtesy of Ulrike Marx. The link is here. Calls for Cheap Euro: ECB Caught in Currency-War Crossfire Billionaire investor George Soros and French President François Hollande, a Socialist, are in agreement: The world is on the verge of a currency war, and it threatens to destroy Europe. The Europeans should finally enter the fray and do battle with all their might, says Soros, who made some of his fortune by betting against the British pound. "Europe is an outsider," the 82-year-old recently said at the Davos World Economic Forum. He blamed the European Central Bank (ECB), which he called the last representative of an outdated central bank policy. Hollande doesn't put it as clearly, but he means the same thing. "A currency zone must have an exchange rate policy, or it will end up with an exchange rate that doesn't correspond to the actual state of its economy," the Socialist told the European Parliament in Strasbourg last week. Wow...Jim Rickards must be smiling every day when he reads headlines like this. This story was posted on the German website spiegel.de yesterday...and my thanks go out to Roy Stephens for sending it. The link is here. Swiss Franc is Still Overvalued, SNB's Zurbruegg Tells Aargauer Swiss National Bank Governing Board member Fritz Zurbruegg said the franc remains too strong and uncertainty about Europe still makes the central bank's currency cap necessary. "The Swiss franc is overvalued even at today's exchange rate against the euro," Zurbruegg was cited as saying in an interview with Aargauer Zeitung published today. "The minimum exchange rate remains the appropriate instrument for the foreseeable future to ensure price stability." The Zurich-based SNB confirmed the remarks. "Particularly in the second and third quarter of 2012, we had to intervene heavily to defend the ceiling," Zurbruegg was cited as saying. "The expansion of the balance sheet is a result of this policy. But that was inevitable in order to combat the massive over-valuation of the Swiss franc." Switzerland overtook China as the world's leader of foreign exchange-rate management in 2012, according to a BGOV Barometer published in December. Of course buying gold would be the real answer...but the powers that be wouldn't be amused if they tried. This Bloomberg article was filed from Zurich yesterday...and I thank Ulrike Marx for her third offering in today's column. It's worth reading...and the link is here. Economists say independent Scotland 'should keep pound' The future currency of Scotland, assuming a "yes" vote in next year's vote on independence, has been questioned by supporters and opponents. Some argue Scotland would have to adopt the euro as a consequence of gaining full EU statehood, while others have called for a new currency or retention of sterling. The Fiscal Commission Working Group, a panel of experts established by the Scottish Government, was asked by ministers to plan for how Scotland would become independent if there is a "yes" vote in the 2014 referendum. They concluded that "it would be in Scotland's interests to retain Sterling immediately post-independence". I suppose it will depend on which currencies are left standing when this vote on independence is finally taken. How would you like to chose between the British pound and the euro at this point in history? This article showed up on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site yesterday morning GMT...and I thank Roy Stephens for bringing it to our attention. The link is here. Greeks strip country for scrap cash Train lines, bridges, cables and even cemeteries have all been targeted for scrap to feed a market driven by China and India. Police now arrest an average of four metal thieves every day, compared to a few cases every month before the crisis started in late 2009. The profile of the metal thief is also changing, authorities say, from gypsies and immigrants living on the margins of society to mainstream Greeks who have fallen on hard times. As European countries dip in and out of recession, global demand for metals has remained high due to the industrial rise of emerging powers, making stolen cables and metal used in infrastructure a growth market worldwide. Some 3,635 people have been arrested in Greece for metal theft between the start of 2010 and August 2012, according to the public order ministry. The robberies are becoming both more frequent and more brazen, a sign of the desperate times. Nothing new here...and there's nothing that the authorities can do to stop it. And as the crisis pulls down other European economies, I expect this problems will soon surface in Spain, Portugal...and then France. This article was posted on the express.co.uk Internet site yesterday...and I thank West Virginia reader Elliot Simon for sending it. The link is here. Radical Rescue Proposed for Cyprus A radical new option for the financial rescue of Cyprus would force losses on uninsured depositors in Cypriot banks, as well as investors in the country's sovereign bonds, according to a confidential memorandum prepared ahead of Monday's meeting of euro zone finance ministers. The proposal for a "bail-in" of investors and depositors, and drastic shrinking of the Cypriot banking sector, is one of three options put forward as alternatives to a full-scale bailout. The ministers are trying to agree a rescue plan by March, to follow the presidential elections in Cyprus later this month. The new plan has not been endorsed by its authors in the European Commission or by individual euro zone members. The memo warns that "the risks associated with this option are significant", including a renewed danger of contagion in euro zone financial markets, and premature collapse in the Cypriot banking sector. Yep, you couldn't make this stuff up. This short Financial Times story was picked up by CNBC yesterday...and it's definitely worth reading. I thank Ontario reader Richard O'Mara for finding this story for us...and the link is here. Tear gas, water cannons as Egyptians throw stones at presidential palace Egyptian police had to use water cannons and tear gas to disperse stone-throwing protesters gathered outside the presidential palace in Cairo. The clashes broke out after several hundred demonstrators marched to the palace on a day of marches against Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi. Other protesters marched to Tahrir Square chanting,"Down with Brotherhood rule," Naharnet reported. Thousands of other protesters took part in separate demonstrations across the country. The Presidential Guard began spraying protesters with water hoses after they attempted to remove barbed wire surrounding the palace, Al-Ahram reported. "We may be few in numbers but we will not back down from fighting criminals dressed up in police uniform," protester Ahmed Farghaly told Reuters. This Reuters story from yesterday showed up on the Russia Today website...and it's courtesy of Roy Stephens. The link is here. North Korea Conducts Third Nuclear Device in Defiance of UN North Korea held its third nuclear test today, underscoring a disregard for an international community that has already isolated the totalitarian state from the global economy. North Korea detonated underground "an atomic warhead that is lighter and miniaturized but with a big explosive charge," the official Korean Central News Agency said in a statement. South Korea's Defense Ministry estimated the yield at 6 to 7 kilotons, bigger than the previous two tests. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima had an estimated yield of 15 kilotons. "It just shows the failure of diplomacy and the continuation of the old broken-record story, the game of cat- and-mouse where North Korea is trying to intimidate its neighbors and the neighbors are trying to push for more deterrents and an escalation of tensions is inevitable," said Leonid Petrov, a North Korean analyst and associate researcher at the Australian National University in Canberra. This Bloomberg story was filed from Seoul...an

Stewart Thompson: Q.E. and gold revaluation Posted: 22 Feb 2013 01:12 PM PST Stewart Thompson: Q.E. and gold revaluation Market analyst and newsletter writer Stewart Thompson argues that as "quantitative easing" increasingly is recognized to have failed to revive economies, nations will turn to gold revaluation, just as they did during the Great Depression. "Gold is going higher, much higher," Thompson writes. "It's going higher because government treasury departments are moving away from quantitative easing involving bonds and toward QE involving gold. The gold bears will be destroyed, and everything they made you afraid of will seem ridiculous in hindsight. There will be no currency war, but there will be co-ordinated devaluation of all G20 currencies against gold, just like there was in the 1930s." This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart...and I found this story in a GATA release yesterday. Thompson's commentary is headlined "Q.E. and Gold Revaluation"...and it's posted at the goldseek.com Internet site. It's worth reading...and the link is here.

Jim Rickards: Global Monetary System Headed for Collapse Posted: 22 Feb 2013 01:12 PM PST "Whether it was real buyers and sellers, or just high-frequency traders duking it out, is hard to tell." ¤ Yesterday In Gold & Silver As I mentioned in 'The Wrap' in yesterday's column, the gold price didn't do a lot in Far East or early London trading yesterday...and volumes were very light. Of course that all changed about an hour after the Comex open...and then the fight was on. It was down, up, down until 1:00 p.m Eastern time...and from there the gold price traded quietly into the close. If you're looking for an explanation...I don't have one, sorry. All I know is that volume exploded during that three hour time period...and whether it was real buyers and sellers, or just high-frequency traders duking it out, is hard to tell. Whatever it was, it was hardly the free market in action. Anyway, when the smoke cleared, gold closed the Thursday session in New York at $1,671.00 spot...down $6.30 on the day...and well off its high Volume was an immense 189,000 contracts, give or take. The low and high ticks came about an hour apart...and Kitco recorded them as $1,662.10 and $1,684.40 respectively. Here's the New York Spot Gold [Bid] chart on its own so you can see the New York price action in more detail. It was pretty much the same price pattern in silver, so I'll spare you the blow-by-blow description. The only big difference was that silver never recovered after the second sell-off that began shortly before 11:00 a.m. Eastern time...the close of the London bullion market. The New York low and high ticks were $31.22 and $32.04 spot respectively...an intraday move of about a buck [3 percent] in three hours of trading. Of course there was nothing free market about this price action, either. Silver closed at $31.46 spot...down 39 cents. Net volume was very chunky at 46,000 contracts. Here's the New York Silver [Bid] chart on its own... Both platinum and palladium finished down on the day as well, but did not have chart patterns that looked remotely like gold and silver...and here are their respective charts. The dollar index opened trading in the Far East at 79.74...and then gently sold off about 15 or 20 basis points before heading higher in a hurry starting around 7:40 a.m. in New York...and by the time the face plant in gold and silver began at 9:20 a.m. Eastern time, over half of the dollar index gains were in for the day. The index reached its zenith shortly before 11:00 a.m. Eastern time...and the start of the second sell-off in both gold and silver. From there the index traded just about ruler flat into the close...finishing the Thursday session at 80.24...up an even 50 basis points on the day. You pretty much have to be dreaming in Technicolor if you saw any correlation between the precious metal prices and that currency move yesterday...but the mentally challenged PM analysts...which cuts through a large swath of the talking heads these days...will point to that as the reason...as they just aren't smart enough to think of anything else...and if they do, they dare not mention it. The gold stocks pretended like those price moves hardly occurred at all...although the high tick of the day came shortly before 11:00 a.m. Eastern time...the peak of the dollar index and the beginning of the second sell-off in both gold and silver. The HUI closed with a small gain of 0.21%...which is better than the alternative. It was pretty much the same for the silver stocks. Despite the negative close for the metal itself, the associated equities finished mixed...and Nick Laird's Silver Sentiment Index closed down a tiny 0.08%. (Click on image to enlarge) The CME's Daily Delivery Report showed no delivery activity in either gold or silver within the Comex-approved depositories. Only 59 copper contracts were posted for delivery on Monday. And, much to my surprise, both GLD and SLV had authorized participants deposit metal yesterday. In GLD it was 58,079 troy ounces...and in SLV it was a pretty chunky 821,932 troy ounces. About 2.2 million ounces have been deposited in SLV since the beginning of the month. While on the subject of SLV, their bar list has been updated with the prior week's activity...and you can find their latest weekly bar analysis for that ETF posted over at the about.ag/SLV Internet site linked here. The U.S. Mint had a sales report yesterday. They sold 33,000 ounces of gold eagles...along with another 98,000 silver eagles. No one-ounce 24K gold buffaloes were reported sold yesterday...and none have been sold so far this month. It was another busy day over at the Comex-approved depositories on Wednesday. They reported receiving 311,160 troy ounces of silver...and shipped a rather large 1,430,433 troy ounces out the door. The link to that activity is here. Here's a chart that Nick Laird whipped up last night...and you, dear reader, are the first to see it. As you can tell, it's self-explanatory, which is my favourite kind of chart. I have a more reasonable number of stories for you today...at least compared to the last couple of days. ¤ Critical Reads Consumers Borrowed More in December U.S. consumer borrowing rose in December, a hopeful sign for the strength of the economy although debt taken on through revolving facilities like credit cards fell during the month. The Federal Reserve said on Thursday consumer credit increased by $14.59 billion in December after rising by a slightly revised $15.91 billion in November. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast consumer credit rising $13.4 billion after advancing by a previously reported $16.05 billion in November. This very short Reuters piece was picked by CNBC yesterday afternoon...and I thank West Virginia reader Elliot Simon for today's first story. The link is here. Fed Has Bought More U.S. Gov't Debt This Year Than Treasury Has Issued On Dec. 31, the total debt of the U.S. government was $16.4327 trillion and then-Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner announced that the government had hit what was then the legal debt limit. Last week, however, Congress enacted a law to suspend the federal government debt limit until May 18, 2013, and allow the administration to resume increasing the debt. By the close of business on Wednesday, Feb. 6, according to the U.S. Treasury, the total federal debt had climbed to $16.4799 trillion—an increase of $47.2 billon for the calendar year. At the close of business on Jan. 2, the Federal Reserve had owned $1.661 trillion in U.S. Treasury securities. By the close of business on Feb. 6, it owned $1.7172 trillion—an increase of $51.1 billion for the calendar year. This article appeared on the cnsnews.com Internet site yesterday...and I thank Scott Pluschau for sending it. The link is here. Short U.S. Government Bonds 'Right Now': Jim Rogers With the Federal Reserve and now Bank of Japan printing massive amounts of money, billionaire investor Jim Rogers told CNBC's "Closing Bell," he is shorting U.S. government debt. "It's all artificial what's going on right now," Rogers said. "The Federal Reserve is printing money as fast as they can. The Bank of Japan said 'we're going to print unlimited money.'" He called the Fed's monetary stimulus "outrageous." This CNBC story, with a 9:53 minute embedded video interview with Maria Bartiromo, was posted on their website late yesterday afternoon Eastern time after the markets had closed for the day. It's Elliot Simon's second offering in today's column...and the link is here. Mark Carney on rate targets, QE and recovery Mark Carney is widely regarded as peerless among central bankers - but what does the man who will govern the new super-powered Bank of England actually think? Here's our take on Carney's economic views. This short piece was posted on The Telegraph's website early Thursday morning GMT...and it sure sounds like Mr. Carney is going to "Print, or die" just like every other central banker. I thank Manitoba reader Ulrike Marx for sending it our way. The link is here. Ireland votes to liquidate Anglo Irish Bank The Irish parliament has voted through emergency legislation to wind down Anglo Irish Bank as the country attempts to cut the cost to the taxpayer of rescuing the collapsed lender. Anglo Irish Bank, now known as IBRC, will be liquidated under the plan and its outstanding debt will be converted into a new long-term bond intended to spread the repayment over a longer period of time cutting the cost to the state. The changes will require the consent of the European Central Bank, which is expected to come today, and follows negotiations between Irish and ECB officials. At present, the Irish government must pay €3.1bn (£2.7bn) every year to service the debt it took on to rescue the bank, equivalent to about 2pc of the country's GDP over the next decade. This is a follow-on story to the one I posted on this issue in yesterday's column, but now the deal is done. This article appeared on the telegraph.co.uk Internet site late yesterday morning GMT...and it's Roy Stephens' first offering of the day. The link is here. ECB gives blessing to 'historic' debt deal for Ireland "Today's outcome is an historic step on the road to economic recovery," Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny said on Thursday in the Irish parliament. "The new plan will likely materially improve perceptions of our debt sustainability in the eyes of potential investors in Ireland," Kenny added. Meanwhile, in Frankfurt, the wording from Mario Draghi was everything but spectacular. This story was posted on the euobserver.com Internet site late yesterday afternoon Brussels time...and it's Roy Stephens' second offering in a row. It's worth skimming...and the link is here. Austerity Summit: EU Budget Compromise Faces Major Hurdles EU leaders are meeting in Brussels on Thursday and Friday to hammer out a budget for the next seven years. Massive differences over how much to spend on agriculture, development and administration will make a compromise extremely difficult. The German chancellor is preparing herself for a tough summit. The European Union has set aside two days for leaders to negotiate a new EU budget, setting priorities for spending from 2014 to 2020. Angela Merkel is cautiously hopefully her position will prevail. "We're going to try, but there's no guarantee," a source close to her said. Last November, the heads of state and government failed miserably to reach a compromise on the budget. Now they're hoping the second time's the charm. The likelihood of the 27 member states united under one budgetary vision hinges in large part on Germany and France, and on the good will of all those taking part. If there's no agreement, leaders would have to put together a new EU budget every year, using the prior year as a starting point. Sources in Berlin, however, said that was "not a negotiation target." They want a breakthrough. This story appeared on the German website spiegel.de yesterday...and I thank Roy for his third offering in a row. The link is here. François Hollande snubs David Cameron over drive to cut EU budget President François Hollande dug in his heels against David Cameron's drive to slash the EU budget in Brussels on Thursday, staying away from a meeting with the prime minister and Chancellor Angela Merkel aimed at forging a compromise. As European leaders joined battle over almost €1 trillion in EU spending for the seven years up to 2020, Hollande led a troika of France, Italy, and Spain apparently resolved to resist Downing Street. Cameron met Merkel and the two EU presidents, Jose Manuel Barroso and Herman Van Rompuy, to explore the potential for agreement. Hollande was expected to attend the meeting which went on for more than one hour. When he did not show, Van Rompuy, chairing the summit, repeatedly phoned the French leader to summon him to the negotiation. This article was posted on the guardian.co.uk Internet site in the wee hours of this morning GMT and, once again, my thanks go out to Roy Stephens. The link is here. Germany shoots down Hollande's exchange rate plea The German government has moved quickly to shoot down a plea by French President Francois Hollande for the EU to agree measures to control the euro's exchange rate. Government spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said Wednesday (6 February) that Angela Merkel's administration would not support a move away from the euro's floating exchange rate. "We are convinced that exchange rates reflect the economic fundamentals, especially flexible ones. We are open to a discussion with France about it, but the German government doesn't think that an exchange rate policy is an appropriate instrument to boost competitiveness. It may set some short-term impulses, but nothing sustainable," he said. Here's another article from Roy Stephens. This one showed up on the euobserver.com Internet site early on Wednesday evening. The link is here. Deutsche Bank suspends more traders for alleged Libor-rigging The BBC understands that five traders, based in Frankfurt, were suspended on Tuesday. Deutsche has been looking into alleged manipulation of the Libor and Euribor benchmark lending rates. Libor and Euribor are used to price hundreds of trillions of pounds worth of financial contracts, including loans and mortgages to businesses and individuals. Deutsche said in a statement: "Upon discovering that certain employees acted inappropriately, we have suspended or dismissed employees, clawed back unvested compensation, and will continue to do so as we complete our investigation." The bank declined to confirm how many staff were suspended on Tuesday, nor how many had previously been dismissed or suspended. This article was posted on the bbc.co.uk Internet site during the Wednesday lunch hour...and I thank reader "David in California" for sending it. The link is here. Man trampled as hundreds of desperate Greeks scuffle for food A fruit and vegetable handout in Greece led to one man being trampled on Wednesday, calling attention to the desperate conditions in the crisis-hit country. Some 55 tons of produce was given away by farmers who were protesting high production costs. The person was injured when he was pushed by a crowd trying to grab the goods and fell and hit his head. The chaos was sparked when food stalls ran out of fruits and vegetables, prompting dozens of people to rush to a nearby truck. It was an "every man for himself" situation as the Greeks shoved their way to the front of the truck, competing for the food that was left. The 55 tons of food was completely gone in under two hours. This Russia Today story was posted on their website very late on Wednesday evening...and it's certainly worth running through, as there are lots of photos. It's Roy Stephens' final offering in today's column...and the link is here. Cliff Küle interviews Doug Casey Cliff Küle's Lindsey Blumell interviews Doug Casey of Casey Research Doug Casey had not written a book in 15 years, but now the respected author & professional investor is out with his new book Totally Incorrect .. He talks to Cliff Küle about his unique writing approach, why he wants to talk about what others shy away from - topics such as why NASA is a waste of money, whether or not Lincoln & FDR were really great American Presidents In our one-on-one interview, we chat about where the U.S. stands now in terms of its fiscal cliff - "The bankruptcy of the U.S. government is an accomplished fact.", explains how the U.S. federal government deficits are really $4 Trillion per year, not just over a trillion dollars per year - operating this way is going to destroy the U.S. dollar. This interview was posted on the cliffkule.com Internet site on Tuesday...and it runs about 20 minutes. The link is here. James Rickards: Global Monetary System Headed for Collapse The world currency system is riding down the road to catastrophe, says James Rickards, senior managing director of Tangent Capital Partners. The world already has entered a currency war that began in 2010 on the heels of the Federal Reserve's massive easing program, he tells Wall Street Journal Digital Network. Since then, plenty of nations have joined in, including Brazil, Switzerland and Japan, says Rickards, author of "Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crises." "All major central banks are easing," he says. "Eventually so much money will be printed that this will lead to inflation. The endgame is collapse of the international monetary system — sometime sooner than later." His currency view makes Rickards a huge bull on gold. His long-term price estimate is $7,000 an ounce, more than four times the current price of $1,677. Gold could trade in a range between $3,000 and $10,000, Rickards says. "We're not going to get there all at once." I agree totally with Jim's assessment. This absolute must read commentary was posted over at the moneynews.com Internet site early Wednesday evening...and I thank Elliot Simon for digging it up on our behalf. If I had to pick just one story for you to read out of today's column...this would be it...and the link is here. Three King World News Blogs/Audio Interviews The first blog is with Michael Pento...and it's headlined "Gold to Spike as Fears of Fed Exiting QE are Preposterous". Next is this interview with Robert Fitzwilson. It's entitled "Calls for Printing $30 - $100 Trillion Now, it is Out of Control". The audio interview is with Nigel Farage CME Cuts Gold, Silver Margins Any trader of paper gold and silver will likely never forget the endless and certainly parabolic barrage of margin hikes that the CME imposed in the spring and summer of 2011 which had only one purpose: to break the back of the relentless anti-fiat rally in the precious metals (and which culminated with the historic May 1 take down of silver when the metal plunged some 15% in the span of seconds). Since then, perhaps as a result of initial and maintenance margins still at residual levels indicative of when the S&P was some 30% lower and some $4 trillion less in slushing global central bank liquidity, the upside euphoria in gold and silver has been decidedly hobbled, perhaps so much that the CME is now scrambling to find a whole new set of gullible investors who will obediently put their money in the paper trap, only to see a surge followed by yet another mauling from soaring margin demands. This short story includes a list of the new margin and maintenance prices from the CME's website. This story was posted over at the Zero Hedge website last night...and it's Elliot Simon's final offering in today's column. The link is here. This story shall the good man teach his son Last night Jim Sinclair appealed to his comrades in golden arms for a little courage. "Gold has always been a war between sound finance and debt-ridden currencies," Sinclair writes. "When you entered the fray you joined a band of brothers and sisters as foxhole buddies in this war for both gold's and our freedom." He proposes that they take a simple pledge not to be frightened and then offers Kenneth Branagh's performance of the St. Crispin's Day speech from "Henry V," likely the greatest and noblest passage from Shakespeare, who has the king's eloquence and righteousness carrying his vastly outnumbered soldiers to victory over the French army at Agincourt. Gold bugs surely are engaged in a war -- not just a war between sound finance and dishonest currencies but a war between democracy and plutocracy, imperialism and national self-determination, truth and lies, justice and fraud, a war against all the power and money in the world. The rest of Chris Powell's comments, plus the link to Jim's article, is posted at the gata.org Internet site...and the link is here. Turkey will not halt Iran gold exports despite sanctions pressure Turkey will not be swayed by U.S. sanctions pressure to halt gold exports to Iran but Tehran's demand for the metal may fall this year, Economy Minister Zafer Caglayan said on Thursday. U.S. officials are concerned that Turkey's gold sales, which allow Iran to export natural gas, provides a financial lifeline to Tehran, which is largely frozen out of the global banking system by Western sanctions imposed over its nuclear programme. Trade in Turkish gold bars to Iran via Dubai is drying up as banks and dealers increasingly refuse to buy the bullion to avoid sanctions risks associated with the trade. Turkey has a six-month U.S. waiver exempting it from financial sanctions again

Matt Taibbi....Gangster Bankers: Too Big to Jail Posted: 22 Feb 2013 01:12 PM PST Matt Taibbi....Gangster Bankers: Too Big to Jail The deal was announced quietly, just before the holidays, almost like the government was hoping people were too busy hanging stockings by the fireplace to notice. Flooring politicians, lawyers and investigators all over the world, the U.S. Justice Department granted a total walk to executives of the British-based bank HSBC for the largest drug-and-terrorism money-laundering case ever. Yes, they issued a fine – $1.9 billion, or about five weeks' profit – but they didn't extract so much as one dollar or one day in jail from any individual, despite a decade of stupefying abuses. People may have outrage fatigue about Wall Street, and more stories about billionaire greed-heads getting away with more stealing often cease to amaze. But the HSBC case went miles beyond the usual paper-pushing, keypad-punching­ sort-of crime, committed by geeks in ties, normally associated­ with Wall Street. In this case, the bank literally got away with murder – well, aiding and abetting it, anyway. For at least half a decade, the storied British colonial banking power helped to wash hundreds of millions of dollars for drug mobs, including Mexico's Sinaloa drug cartel, suspected in tens of thousands of murders just in the past 10 years – people so totally evil, jokes former New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, that "they make the guys on Wall Street look good." The bank also moved money for organizations linked to Al Qaeda and Hezbollah, and for Russian gangsters; helped countries like Iran, the Sudan and North Korea evade sanctions; and, in between helping murderers and terrorists and rogue states, aided countless common tax cheats in hiding their cash. Despite its length, this essay by Matt Taibbi is an absolute must read from one end to the other...and I thank Marshall Angeles for sharing it with us. It was posted on the Rolling Stone website on Thursday...and the link is here.

Doug Noland: Hedge Funds Gone Wild Posted: 22 Feb 2013 01:12 PM PST Doug Noland: Hedge Funds Gone Wild At the same time, there is also ongoing confirmation that the incredible global policymaking and liquidity backdrop is much more successful in inflating asset markets than it is in boosting economic performance. In particular - and especially considering policy environments - economies in Europe, Japan and the U.S. continue to un-impress. This bolsters the view of a widening global gap between inflating financial asset prices and underlying economic fundamentals. This begs the question: how might the emboldened "global macro" community play this divergence? Will they play policymaking and the inflating Bubble for all it's worth? Or will they begin to approach speculative markets with a more contrarian bent? With some funds emboldened and still so many others desperate for performance, it seems reasonable to assume that markets become even more speculative – a game of trying to catch folks on the wrong side of trades (i.e. Apple, gold, etc.), underexposed to outperforming sectors (i.e. homebuilders and "short" stocks) and overexposed to the underperforming (i.e. "defensive"). Most call it a "new bull market". I'll stick with "inflating speculative Bubble". Doug Noland's weekly Credit Bubble Bulletin falls into the must read category for me every week. Yesterday's edition is posted at the prudentbear.com Internet site...and the link is here.

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