Gold World News Flash

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• Leading Indicators from the Superstars of Resource Investing
• Leading Indicators from the Superstars of Resource Investing
• Leading Indicators from the Superstars of Resource Investing
• Jim Rickards: China Has the Greatest Motive to Manipulate Gold!
• Herbalife: The Greater Fools Theory
• The Gold Rush Spreads From China And India To Saudi Arabia
• Will The Consumer Rise In 2014?
• The Gold Price Gained $6.70 Ending at $1,205.10
• The Gold Price Gained $6.70 Ending at $1,205.10
• Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Merry Christmas!
• Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Merry Christmas!
• Queen Gold Changes Horses In 2014
• After a year, Bundesbank repatriates only 37 of 700 tonnes of gold
• Queen Gold Changes Horses In 2014
• The Ghost Of Christmas Past
• Where to Invest as the US Wallows in “Recovery”
• Thank You, TSA, NSA, FBI, and CIA!
• J.S. Kim: Of course the big banks predict that gold will crash
• J.S. Kim: Of course the big banks predict that gold will crash
• Angry Bart Chilton takes his parting shot
• Fact vs. Fiction - Truth vs. Lies
• Fact vs. Fiction - Truth vs. Lies
• The Chinese Monopoly of 2014
• Silver Bells Ringing Price Bottom?
• Shane Nagle: Making Your Portfolio Pricing-Pressure Proof
• Shane Nagle: Making Your Portfolio Pricing-Pressure Proof
• Shane Nagle: Making Your Portfolio Pricing-Pressure Proof
• Obamacare Support at Record Low 35%; Obamacare Named "Lie of the Year"; Bait and Switch; Obamacare Roundup; Meltdown Coming?
• Turk reflects on 2013 and introduces new book, 'The Money Bubble'
• Turk reflects on 2013 and introduces new book, ‘The Money Bubble’
• The Gold Price and Its Cycle | Mike Maloney & James Turk
• Do I Hear Bells Ringing for a Bottom in Silver?
• Dominican Republic gold rush vexed by bureaucracy
• Hedge funds cut bullish gold bets amid record outflows
• Barrick Gold to sell Plutonic Mine to Northern Star
• Eric Sprott's best interview yet; fame for Bill Murphy will mark gold's top
• Monetary Metals Supply and Demand Report
• What Happens When You Have to Admit the Gold’s Not There-Eric Sprott
• In Post-Crisis World, Central Banks Strengthening Ties With Dollar
• 100 Years Of Monetary Socialism Is Enough!
• Jesse Livermore Gold Trading Signal
• Money, Gold And Liberty – What Has Changed In 2013?
• Christmas Wishes
• Russ Winter: China successfully hunts where there is gold
• The Gold Price Gave Up $6.70 Ending at $1,198.40
• The Gold Price Gave Up $6.70 Ending at $1,198.40
• GoldCore's O'Byrne: Gold market rigging isn't an outlandish complaint anymore
• The Cure
• Silver Used in BMW 760 And 3-D Printing
• Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Muddling Through the End of December Delivery

Leading Indicators from the Superstars of Resource Investing Posted: 27 Dec 2013 12:00 AM PST Knowledge is money in resource investing. That is why The Gold Report reaches out to the top experts in the sector all year long to bring you their best investing ideas. For this special year-end feature, we asked some of your favorite thought leaders about the tools they use to spot trends and make those important buy-sell decisions. What are the early indicators that gold will rise, plummet or coast sideways? Is it Federal Reserve bond buying? China's growth rate? Lipstick sales? You may be surprised by the answers.

Leading Indicators from the Superstars of Resource Investing Posted: 27 Dec 2013 12:00 AM PST Knowledge is money in resource investing. That is why The Gold Report reaches out to the top experts in the sector all year long to bring you their best investing ideas. For this special year-end feature, we asked some of your favorite thought leaders about the tools they use to spot trends and make those important buy-sell decisions. What are the early indicators that gold will rise, plummet or coast sideways? Is it Federal Reserve bond buying? China's growth rate? Lipstick sales? You may be surprised by the answers.

Leading Indicators from the Superstars of Resource Investing Posted: 27 Dec 2013 12:00 AM PST Knowledge is money in resource investing. That is why The Gold Report reaches out to the top experts in the sector all year long to bring you their best investing ideas. For this special year-end... Visit the aureport.com for more information and for a free newsletter

Jim Rickards: China Has the Greatest Motive to Manipulate Gold! Posted: 24 Dec 2013 08:20 PM PST from Silver Doctors: When asked by Aussie Lelde Smits what prompted the plunge in gold & silver Jim Rickards responded: We know there is some central bank manipulation, we know this is going on, its actually disclosed in certain ways. Whenever you're trying to solve a crime you ask who has the motive?  The person with the greatest motive to keep the price of gold low is actually China because they have the most to buy.  People point their finger at the Fed, but you might suspect China. Rickards full interview on gold, QE, & Bitcoin is below: Read More @ SilverDoctors.com

Herbalife: The Greater Fools Theory Posted: 24 Dec 2013 07:58 PM PST By EconMatters Short Squeezes – Easier Said, Than Done On December 5 Herbalife Ltd. (HLF) got as high as $76.43 and some investors might be thinking that they could get in on a short squeeze of Bill Ackman and Pershing Square Capital Management`s public and noteworthy short position on the company.   Well since then the stock has dropped to $68.36 in 6 trading days and longs shouldn`t look for any help in front of the all-important FOMC Meeting and Tapering decision on Wednesday of this upcoming week in the markets. The mood has been Risk-Off with investors taking considerable profits in many stocks the last 5 trading days.   Retail Investors shouldn`t Invest on Short-Squeeze Thesis This just goes to show that even when the big players of the investing world are seemingly teaming up to cause Bill Ackman to cover his position and reap the benefits of a massive short squeeze, this should never influence an investor`s decision to invest in companies. An investor should first and foremost pick strong companies which are well run and have products in the marketplace that have a definitive strategic or competitive advantage.     Investing in the Gold Market 2014 Herbalife isn't exactly GE Quality I have done enough research on Herbalife to say definitively that this is not GE that you are investing in when it comes to a real genuine quality company. Herbalife is like the infomercial of stocks that comes on late at night to sell consumers products with all kinds of gimmicks and marketing sleight of hand.   Beware of Buying Credibility Whenever a company spends so much money trying to make themselves seem credible it is because they aren`t in the first place. BMW doesn`t need to buy credibility, the quality of their products speak for themselves, and have for decades. GE doesn`t have to pay credible people to associate themselves with their products so as to gain credibility in the marketplace.   Just read the weekly press releases by Herbalife they are usually about trying to buy credibility. You see this with a lot of companies that are listed on the Pink Sheets, and many of these companies are borderline scam companies, or another way to put it would be un-investable.   Blackberry: A Long Strategy for 2014   Semantical Debate Meaningless Whether one wants to label Herbalife a Ponzi scheme, a multilevel marketing firm, or some other derivation this is purely a semantical question an unimportant for investing purposes; the big picture is that this company doesn`t make for a good long-term investment because it doesn`t have a legitimate business model.       Herbalife`s Revenue Stream: Products versus Recruitment I work out and like many people these days I buy fitness and health supplement products, but I and most people in the world do not buy overpriced commodity products from a multi-level marketer.    This is the age of the internet and many wholesale suppliers offer all the branded products that the consumer could possibly want in the health and fitness supplement industry online at much cheaper prices than the retail market.   GM: Momentum Stock Candidate 2014   Less price savvy consumers may buy some health products at their local gym or GNC outlet. Shoot Walmart even sells nutritional supplements these days and usually at very competitive retail prices. However, it is abundantly clear to all but the uninitiated that there is not a booming market for buying overpriced nutritional supplements from a multilevel marketing organization.   Greater Fools Theory Consequently Herbalife isn`t making a fortune off of selling their products, they are making money off of predatory recruitment of greater fools, plain and simple Herbalife is a "Recruiting Company." It is unfortunate that there happens to be an abundance of greater fools in the world to support this type of business model.   However, this is not an unusual phenomenon in the world, and it usually ends very badly when governments have to step in to protect the citizens from themselves. Alternatively, the marketing scheme ends when the economics crash on themselves because people will only participate in a scheme if there are legitimate financial incentives for the bulk of the recruitments, and/or the market runs out of foolish people to recruit.   Pink Sheets Methodology & Business Model The business model that exemplifies Herbalife where they need so fanatically to purchase credibility with large sums of money is one of recruiting. The greater fool theory of recruitment where a few people at the top who managed to get many levels of recruited fools to buy into the scheme below them make some decent money off the backs of all the recruited fools under them, and each level down in the scheme represents larger proportions of members who make virtually nothing at all. Call it what you want but it is a very unsavory business model. It is highly predatory and probably should not be allowed to be listed on a major exchange. This is the type of company that investors need to be wary of on the Pink Sheets that releases all these monthly and weekly press releases trying to make them seem legitimate because they have no credibility that stands on its own, so they need to affiliate with credible and respected people to attract investors.   It is a whole different aspect as well, but shame on the credible people for selling out their integrity for a quick buck, but that`s where the size of the payments comes in, and Herbalife has spent quite a large sum of money to try and buy some marketplace credibility. Accordingly at high enough remuneration levels the temptation becomes too great for those who need the money – so they sell out the one quality that the multilevel marketing company needs to sell new recruits on this unique business opportunity – Market Credibility.   If you Don`t Know Anybody Who Buys Herbalife Products, then avoid Investing in Company So needless to say Herbalife doesn`t offer any products that cannot be acquired through much cheaper means by consumers. They don`t offer any unique product offerings, they don`t own a whole bunch of patents, they don`t have one single revolutionary product. So you shouldn`t be investing in this company on its own merits.   Investing Options for Retail Strategy Consequently is there any way to play this stock for the investor. The short answer is no, and here are the reasons why.  The stock could by all accounts be a worthy short candidate, but with the big players who have publicly lined up against Bill Ackman, and once this has become an ego driven trade for some of these players, this for all practical purposes eliminates an investor taking a reasonable short position. Further exacerbated by the fact that if a short squeeze ever occurred, the stock could gap up so high that no effective stop loss could protect the investor.   Options Market: Hefty Premiums I looked up the options prices even 16 months out, and there are no bargains to be found. The market makers are willing to sell the investor an option on the stock, but with a hefty insurance premium, in a liquidity fueled bull market that can keep poor company`s stocks afloat long after these options expire.   The investor would have to buy a strike for the option way out of the money, and hope that regulators step in, but this is a strategy that relies upon a lot of outside intervention – and I try to avoid those plays.   There are safer places to put your money as an investor than needing to have government or outside intervention for your position to work as an investor. This is a sign of a poor investment calculation, and more of a pure gambling play.   Game versus Investing What about piggy backing upon the big players and try and force Ackman to cover his positions? Leave this to the big players as many of these players can hedge risk a lot cheaper than the average investor, and for some of these players it is more of a game than an investment.   Carl Icahn has more money than he will ever need in his remaining lifetime, he wants to win, but if he loses it is no big deal to his personal wealth as one of the wealthiest investors on Wall Street. This is a personal revenge issue between the two, and Icahn has the personal wealth to spare to play this game - regardless of the outcome; the Retail Investor doesn`t fit into this category.   Stock Gaps are Account Killers The Gold Rush Spreads From China And India To Saudi Arabia Posted: 24 Dec 2013 04:59 PM PST In the "west", the higher the price of gold rose, the more demand there seemingly was by momentum-chasing gamblers investors, if only for paper certificates claiming to represent gold, or GLD as the case may be. Conversely, once the momentum turned, the same investors couldn't be bothered with gld (sic) even at 30% lower. At the same time, in the "east" the higher the price of gold rose, the lower the demand was for physical, which for that extinct breed of deranged gambler known as "value investor" is a familiar concept."  And now that gold's price is not only back to early 2011 levels, but is essentially below production costs, demand out of China is off the charts. Demand in India - traditionally the greatest in the world - continues to also at unprecedented levels, although now that official purchases of gold are regulated and limited through capital controls, it is forcing the local population to smuggle in gold through the most innovative of schemes. But while the west is the west, and the east is the east, and no amount of adaptive behavioral modifications can change that, much to central bankers' chagrin, what lies in-between? Courtesy of the Saudi Gazette we learn that the uber-rich middle eastern kingdom, which floats on a sea of oil has picked its side... and it has chosen to take advantage of the ongoing paper-driven price collapse and load up on as much gold as possible. From the Saudi Gazette: The gold shops in Jeddah are now flourishing as more customers are buying various gold types thanks to the international drop of gold prices.   Saleh who works in Al-Amari gold shop said that more people are now buying various gold jewelries and others are buying gold bullions to store their money after staying away from gold for quite sometime.   According to him various nationalities are approaching them including Saudis, Africans and Indians. The prices he said range from SR165 to SR140 per gram based on the item being sold. The price is set based on any additional work or jewelries being added. The country where the gold comes from also determent the price, "We have Italian Indian, Bahraini, Korean and local gold creations each with a distinct price," said Saleh.   Speaking to the Saudi Gazette, Ali Batarfi,  deputy chief of gold in Jeddah, said that they anticipate that the gold prices will continue to drop towards this month to reach $1150 per once, however the prices are likely to increase during the first quarter of 2014.   Batarfi said "the gold market is now witnessing an increase in sales thinks to the drop in gold prices, however not only that but also the school break that will start very soon will also drag more consumers into the market who will buy gold for their special occasions especially weddings."   The gold has marked a drop this year from $1,920 per once to $1,193.3, which crated a difference in the costumer attitude in buying and storing gold, said Batarfi and added, "we anticipate that more gold will be sold both with jewelries and pure bullions." Experts in the field believe that the international move towards investing in various sectors and the stabilization of these moves have decreased the investment in gold with China and India lessening their investment in gold. The demand on gold from central banks has also lessened. Consumer demand for gold jewelry worldwide grew by 20 percent for the year ending September 2013, reaching 3,757 tons and valued at $183.9 billion.   According to a report released lately by The World Gold Council's Gold Demand Trends, regional consumer demand for gold jewelry has grown by 25 percent, reaching 225.8 tons and valued at $10.9 billion, with the UAE and Saudi Arabia featuring prominently. So while the rest of the world celebrates the anti-Giffen good nature of gold, a function of sophisticated US investors for whom only momentum and 200 DMA lines matter, and is buying it up at an unprecedented pace, these same sophisticated investors in the US are dumping the certificates representing to be backed by the yellow metal in droves and are BTFATHing stock certificates exchangeable for a currency that is being diluted at a pace of $85 $75 billion per month, even as more and more gold miners are set to go out of business if the price of gold continues to drop below production cost. We are confident that we know how this latest "conflict" between "east" and "west" will end...

Will The Consumer Rise In 2014? Posted: 24 Dec 2013 03:00 PM PST Submitted by Lance Roberts of STA Wealth Management, I have had the distinct pleasure of visiting with Paul La Monica a couple of times during my visits to the "Big Apple" and have always made sure to read his writings.  Just recently he penned an article discussing the "5 Reasons Why Stocks Will Go Up In 2014" in which he states: "Fortunately, many investment experts think that stocks will head higher next year. And while I always worry a little bit when few others are worrying about what could go wrong, I'm inclined to drink the Kool-Aid believe the bull case. 1) The Fed taper is no big deal, and now that it is done investors can stop worrying about it. 2) Interest rates will remain fairly tame in 2014. 3) The "great rotation" will continue. 4) The market is not "bubbly." 5) The economy will continue to strengthen...finally. These are all interesting points, and would very likely seem to be correct in the short term as market momentum drives stock prices higher.  However, there are three potential headwinds that are likely to weigh on the economy and the markets which are potentially being overlooked. 1) Personal Income Growth Continues To Wane The latest report on personal income continues to show real weakness.  The chart below shows the annual rate of change in personal incomes which has turned sharply lower in recent months despite reports of stronger employment and economic growth. The problem here is simple.  The economy is almost 70% based on personal consumption and weakness in personal incomes does not augur for stronger economic growth in the months ahead which is highly anticipated, once again, by the majority of analysts and economists.  One of the side effects of lower incomes is a reduction in tax revenue which will negatively impact the deficit.  One of the hopes of economists has been the drastically reduced budget deficit which, as I discussed previously, is likely a short term illusion that will be reversed in the quarters ahead.  Furthermore, the recent passage of the Murray-Ryan budget bill drops extended unemployment benefits at the end of the year which will reduce the personal incomes of roughly 1.5 million families in the U.S.  The withdrawal of subsidies, combined with the ongoing slack in the labor force which continues to pressure wage growth, will further erode consumption in the next year unless those benefits are restored.   2) Dependence On Government Assistance Still To High Of course, if there was ever a single issue that suggests the economy will continue to struggle in the months, and quarters, ahead it is simply the number of American's that continue to subsist on government subsidies.  The chart below shows the percentage of social benefits as a percentage of real disposable income. As stated above, the lack of wage growth, high unemployment and rising costs of living continues to keep dependence on social benefits near record levels.  This does not bode well for acceleration in consumption in the coming year particularly when that income is exposed to a threat of higher healthcare costs. 3) The Impact Of The ACA On Consumption As I have stated many times before, the onset of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has been greatly dismissed by most economists and analysts.  A recent article at Breitbart.com goes to the heart of the problem that I have been discussing for some time which is higher costs for individuals across the country. "Increasingly, experts in health insurance are becoming concerned that many of these first-time buyers will be in for a shock when they get medical care next year and discover they're on the hook for most of the initial cost." If we just assume that healthcare costs rise by just $100 per month, based on a national per capita income level of $47,585 as of Q3-2013, that will equate to a $73.25 billion dollar impact to the overall economy each quarter.  The chart below shows the potential net diversion of real disposable incomes, before and after the higher costs of healthcare, if the ACA had started in Q4-2012. While the increased costs of healthcare are included in the calculation of GDP, for the average American it will mean more dependence on leverage and reduced savings rates in order to make ends meet.   Unfortunately, the lack of savings has its own contribution to weaker economic growth due to reduced productive investment. Paul is correct that there are good reasons to be bullish going into 2014; however, there are ample reasons to remain vigilant with respect to your investments. The stagnation of wage growth combined with higher costs leaves an already cash strapped consumer with few options.  It is likely that we will see a push by consumers to re-leverage their household balance sheet which will be hailed by the media as a return of consumer confidence.  However, one should not forget the last time a highly levered consumer ran into problems.

The Gold Price Gained $6.70 Ending at $1,205.10 Posted: 24 Dec 2013 01:04 PM PST Gold Price Close Today : 1205.10 Change : 6.70 or 0.56% Silver Price Close Today : 19.453 Change : 0.075 or 0.39% Gold Silver Ratio Today : 61.949 Change : 0.106 or 0.17% Silver Gold Ratio Today : 0.01614 Change : -0.000028 or -0.17% Platinum Price Close Today : 1336.50 Change : -4.80 or -0.36% Palladium Price Close Today : 694.55 Change : -3.10 or -0.44% S&P 500 : 1,827.99 Change : 5.33 or 0.29% Dow In GOLD$ : $280.59 Change : $ -0.48 or -0.17% Dow in GOLD oz : 13.574 Change : -0.023 or -0.17% Dow in SILVER oz : 840.88 Change : -0.01 or 0.00% Dow Industrial : 16,357.55 Change : 62.94 or 0.39% US Dollar Index : 80.680 Change : 0.110 or 0.14% SILVER and GOLD PRICES took back today everything they lost yesterday, which reminds me of a pointless battle in World War I. We've fought this ground before. However, keep your eyes open. I still expect a bottom soon, maybe with another waterfall, or maybe proved by a reversal. Yesterday I mentioned swapping gold for silver, to take advantage of a drop in the GOLD/SILVER RATIO from 62:1 to 30:1, which is the next move I expect. If you bought gold at higher prices, this swap would have you "selling" gold at a loss, which you may be able to write off your taxes. Warning: Take not my tax advice, as I am clearly no tax adviser. Check with your own tax daddy about that. Anyway, swapping silver for gold and vice versa does not constitute a "like-kind exchange" for tax purposes. But besides any tax considerations, swapping gold for silver now would set you up to profit from that drop I expect in the ratio, probably a couple of years out. There's hardly any meaning in a pre-holiday market, but I'm sending y'all prices for what they're worth, new highs in the stock market and all. In my comments yesterday I said that "without central banks, world wars and socialism would be impossible: taxpayers and bond markets would rebel before they got too far." By no means does my denunciation of Big Government socialism constitute an endorsement of Big Government industrial capitalism or fascism (the correct name for the business/government partnership that rules us). None of these resemble in the least the only political and economic state I value: ordered liberty. Tomorrow, Christmas Day, and Thursday, St. Stephen's Day, our office will be closed and I won't be sending a commentary. Tonight and tomorrow we will be celebrating the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, wherein all our happiness is embodied. In the Incarnation, the incomprehensible God is made comprehensible, our sins are forgiven and we have peace with God, and we have a faithful High Priest who, because he has suffered all we suffer, can have compassion on us. Glory be to God on high, and on earth, peace, good will to men. Alleluia! Argentum et aurum comparenda sunt -- -- Gold and silver must be bought. - Franklin Sanders, The Moneychanger The-MoneyChanger.com © 2013, The Moneychanger. May not be republished in any form, including electronically, without our express permission. To avoid confusion, please remember that the comments above have a very short time horizon. Always invest with the primary trend. Gold's primary trend is up, targeting at least $3,130.00; silver's primary is up targeting 16:1 gold/silver ratio or $195.66; stocks' primary trend is down, targeting Dow under 2,900 and worth only one ounce of gold or 18 ounces of silver. or 18 ounces of silver. US $ and US$-denominated assets, primary trend down; real estate bubble has burst, primary trend down. WARNING AND DISCLAIMER. Be advised and warned: Do NOT use these commentaries to trade futures contracts. I don't intend them for that or write them with that short term trading outlook. I write them for long-term investors in physical metals. Take them as entertainment, but not as a timing service for futures. NOR do I recommend investing in gold or silver Exchange Trade Funds (ETFs). Those are NOT physical metal and I fear one day one or another may go up in smoke. Unless you can breathe smoke, stay away. Call me paranoid, but the surviving rabbit is wary of traps. NOR do I recommend trading futures options or other leveraged paper gold and silver products. These are not for the inexperienced. NOR do I recommend buying gold and silver on margin or with debt. What DO I recommend? Physical gold and silver coins and bars in your own hands. One final warning: NEVER insert a 747 Jumbo Jet up your nose.

The Gold Price Gained $6.70 Ending at $1,205.10 Posted: 24 Dec 2013 01:04 PM PST Gold Price Close Today : 1205.10 Change : 6.70 or 0.56% Silver Price Close Today : 19.453 Change : 0.075 or 0.39% Gold Silver Ratio Today : 61.949 Change : 0.106 or 0.17% Silver Gold Ratio Today : 0.01614 Change : -0.000028 or -0.17% Platinum Price Close Today : 1336.50 Change : -4.80 or -0.36% Palladium Price Close Today : 694.55 Change : -3.10 or -0.44% S&P 500 : 1,827.99 Change : 5.33 or 0.29% Dow In GOLD$ : $280.59 Change : $ -0.48 or -0.17% Dow in GOLD oz : 13.574 Change : -0.023 or -0.17% Dow in SILVER oz : 840.88 Change : -0.01 or 0.00% Dow Industrial : 16,357.55 Change : 62.94 or 0.39% US Dollar Index : 80.680 Change : 0.110 or 0.14% SILVER and GOLD PRICES took back today everything they lost yesterday, which reminds me of a pointless battle in World War I. We've fought this ground before. However, keep your eyes open. I still expect a bottom soon, maybe with another waterfall, or maybe proved by a reversal. Yesterday I mentioned swapping gold for silver, to take advantage of a drop in the GOLD/SILVER RATIO from 62:1 to 30:1, which is the next move I expect. If you bought gold at higher prices, this swap would have you "selling" gold at a loss, which you may be able to write off your taxes. Warning: Take not my tax advice, as I am clearly no tax adviser. Check with your own tax daddy about that. Anyway, swapping silver for gold and vice versa does not constitute a "like-kind exchange" for tax purposes. But besides any tax considerations, swapping gold for silver now would set you up to profit from that drop I expect in the ratio, probably a couple of years out. There's hardly any meaning in a pre-holiday market, but I'm sending y'all prices for what they're worth, new highs in the stock market and all. In my comments yesterday I said that "without central banks, world wars and socialism would be impossible: taxpayers and bond markets would rebel before they got too far." By no means does my denunciation of Big Government socialism constitute an endorsement of Big Government industrial capitalism or fascism (the correct name for the business/government partnership that rules us). None of these resemble in the least the only political and economic state I value: ordered liberty. Tomorrow, Christmas Day, and Thursday, St. Stephen's Day, our office will be closed and I won't be sending a commentary. Tonight and tomorrow we will be celebrating the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, wherein all our happiness is embodied. In the Incarnation, the incomprehensible God is made comprehensible, our sins are forgiven and we have peace with God, and we have a faithful High Priest who, because he has suffered all we suffer, can have compassion on us. Glory be to God on high, and on earth, peace, good will to men. Alleluia! Argentum et aurum comparenda sunt -- -- Gold and silver must be bought. - Franklin Sanders, The Moneychanger The-MoneyChanger.com © 2013, The Moneychanger. May not be republished in any form, including electronically, without our express permission. To avoid confusion, please remember that the comments above have a very short time horizon. Always invest with the primary trend. Gold's primary trend is up, targeting at least $3,130.00; silver's primary is up targeting 16:1 gold/silver ratio or $195.66; stocks' primary trend is down, targeting Dow under 2,900 and worth only one ounce of gold or 18 ounces of silver. or 18 ounces of silver. US $ and US$-denominated assets, primary trend down; real estate bubble has burst, primary trend down. WARNING AND DISCLAIMER. Be advised and warned: Do NOT use these commentaries to trade futures contracts. I don't intend them for that or write them with that short term trading outlook. I write them for long-term investors in physical metals. Take them as entertainment, but not as a timing service for futures. NOR do I recommend investing in gold or silver Exchange Trade Funds (ETFs). Those are NOT physical metal and I fear one day one or another may go up in smoke. Unless you can breathe smoke, stay away. Call me paranoid, but the surviving rabbit is wary of traps. NOR do I recommend trading futures options or other leveraged paper gold and silver products. These are not for the inexperienced. NOR do I recommend buying gold and silver on margin or with debt. What DO I recommend? Physical gold and silver coins and bars in your own hands. One final warning: NEVER insert a 747 Jumbo Jet up your nose.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Merry Christmas! Posted: 24 Dec 2013 11:11 AM PST

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Merry Christmas! Posted: 24 Dec 2013 11:11 AM PST

Queen Gold Changes Horses In 2014 Posted: 24 Dec 2013 10:32 AM PST Graceland Update

After a year, Bundesbank repatriates only 37 of 700 tonnes of gold Posted: 24 Dec 2013 10:15 AM PST 1:16p ET Tuesday, December 24, 2013 Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: While Germany's Bundesbank announced a year ago that it would repatriate most of the 700 tonnes of gold it has vaulted with foreign central banks, the Berlin newspaper Bild reported yesterday that only 37 tonnes have been repatriated so far: http://www.bild.de/geld/wirtschaft/bundesbank/holt-deutsches-gold-zuruec... Even that much repatriation was to involve only 20 percent of the German gold reserves held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and repatriating even that small fraction was going to require seven years. Zero Hedge notes the Bild report with some acerbic commentary today. The pace of the Bundesbank's gold repatriation, Zero Hedge says, "would make a snail proud." "Since the price of gold has tumbled in 2013 (according to many, driven in part by the Bundesbank's own demand, which would make procuring gold in the open market for the U.S. and French central banks that much easier for subsequent dispatch to Frankfurt) and one would assume that there would be many more sellers than buyers of physical, why would the Bundesbank not be able to obtain a far greater share of the gold? Unless, of course, neither New York nor Paris actually have free, unencumbered physical gold in their possession -- with most of it leased out to various even closer "partners" -- and are scrambling to procure as much physical as they can find at the new low, low prices. (Thank you, paper-gold ETF dumping.)" Zero Hedge's commentary is headlined "A Year Later the Bundesbank Has Repatriated Only 37 Tons Of Gold (0f 700 Total)" and it's posted here: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-12-24/year-later-bundesbank-has-repat... CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc. ADVERTISEMENT Buy metals at GoldMoney and enjoy international storage GoldMoney was established in 2001 by James and Geoff Turk and is safeguarding more than $1.7 billion in metals and currencies. Buy gold, silver, platinum, and palladium from GoldMoney over the Internet and store them in vaults in Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, ­taking advantage of GoldMoney's low storage rates, among the most competitive in the industry. GoldMoney also offers delivery of 100-gram and 1-kilogram gold bars and 1-kilogram silver bars. To learn more, please visit: http://www.goldmoney.com/?gmrefcode=gata Join GATA here: Vancouver Resource Investment Conference Vancouver Convention Centre West Sunday-Monday, January 19-20, 2014 Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada http://www.cambridgehouse.com/event/vancouver-resource-investment-confer... Mines and Money Hong Kong Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre Monday-Friday, March 24-28, 2014 Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China http://www.minesandmoney.com/hongkong/ * * * Support GATA by purchasing DVDs of our London conference in August 2011 or our Dawson City conference in August 2006: http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html Or by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: http://gata.org/tshirts Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: http://www.gata.org To contribute to GATA, please visit: http://www.gata.org/node/16 ADVERTISEMENT How to profit with silver -- and which stocks to buy now Future Money Trends is offering a special 16-page silver report with our forecast for 2013 that includes profiles of nine companies and technical analysis of their stock performance. Six of the companies have market capitalizations of less than $800 million and one company has a market cap of only $30 million. The most exciting of these companies will begin production in a few weeks and has a market cap of just $150 million. Half of all proceeds from the sale of this report will be donated to the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee to support its efforts exposing manipulation and fraud in the gold and silver markets. To learn about this report, please visit: http://www.futuremoneytrends.com/index.php?option=com_content&id=376&tmp...

Queen Gold Changes Horses In 2014 Posted: 24 Dec 2013 10:07 AM PST As the year 2013 comes to a close, I think it's wise to review some longer term charts.First is a weekly gold chart, and what I would term a "commodity-style" double bottom pattern in play. Read More...

The Ghost Of Christmas Past Posted: 24 Dec 2013 09:20 AM PST [This article originally appeared in The Daily Reckoning on December 21, 2000] Old Greenspan was not dead. Not dead as a doornail, nor dead as a doorknocker. Not even as dead as a laptop computer after the power goes out – not even John Maynard Keynes is that dead. Not even God himself, but that is another story. Nothing is as dead as a computer without power. For even a nail continues to provide good service after the spark of life has gone out of it. But Greenspan? The Fed chief was still alive. Not only that, he still had the power to flood the economy with cash…and lift stock prices. And Ebenezer knew it. He had seen him on television not long ago. The old Randite jazzman had said as much. Ebenezer could remember his exact words: “The committee will continue to monitor closely the evolving economic situation.” It sounded like mumbo-jumbo. But Ebenezer knew what it meant. Of course, there were some – such as his old associate Bob – who said that Greenspan couldn’t do it_.that merely reducing interest rates wouldn’t work. But what did they know? “Bah,” said Ebenezer to himself, “humbug.” “What reason is there to worry?” he asked, to no one in particular. “If I could work my will, I would have every idiot who goes about with `recession’ on his breath forced to watch Wall Street Week and read the editorial pages of the International Herald Tribune.” His musing to himself was interrupted by the entrance of two gentlemen who introduced themselves quickly and proceeded to divulge the purpose of their visit. “We thought that, perhaps, given the spirit of the Christmas season,” said the leader of the two, “perhaps you could spare a farthing for the poor, the destitute and the needy.” “Many people,” added the second, “… the poor unfortunates invested their money in dot-com stocks…or the big techs. These people need our help.” “Need our help?” questioned Ebenezer. “Are there no mutual funds?” “Well, of course…” the first began to reply. “And do they not accept small amounts?” demanded Ebenezer. “Yes…but…” replied the second before being interrupted. “And has not the bull market been a fact of life for nearly two decades? And hasn’t every dip turned into a buying opportunity?” “Well, yes…” “And has it not been shouted from every newspaper headline …every news report…every Internet chat room…and every conversation between even the most casual passers-by at even the most ill-informed and downmarket drinking establishment in the most remote and out-of-touch region of the country?” “Doesn’t everyone who is capable of long division now realize,” continued Ebenezer, raising his voice, “that nothing beats investing in stocks over the long run?” “Yes, we are aware…” “Oh! Good. I was afraid that something might have happened…” Then, misinterpreting the ensuing silence for approval, the second gentleman ventured, “Well, in this great time of trial, how much would you like us to put you down for?” “My only wish is to be left alone so that I may continue to enjoy the fruits of the greatest episode of wealth creation in history,” replied Ebenezer, “stocks may be down, but so much the better. I take it as an opportunity to buy more of them for less money…and I suggest that others do the same. Good day, gentlemen.” And Ebenezer turned and walked away, muttering, “A poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket…” That evening, Ebenezer slept poorly, under the fullest moon in more than a century. He had seen Alan Greenspan’s face in his doorknocker. An odd sensation, for Greenspan’s face was hardly one that he expected or hoped for. But there it was…for a fleeting moment, at least. And now, after finally achieving the sleep he longed for, his sleep was suddenly interrupted by the sound of ringing bells. Yes, bells. The kind of bells they fail to ring at the top of a bull market. But why now…clanging like chains in the middle of the night? The door to his bedroom blew open…and the clanging sounds seemed to mount the stairs. “Humbug,” he thought, “I won’t believe it. The bears have been hearing ringing in their ears for years. The poor fools. “Recession…bear markets…crashes…” And now they’re at it again…more convinced than ever. Ha!” His color changed though, when, without a pause, it came on through the heavy door and passed into the room before his eyes. The face: it was the same face he had seen on the doorknocker earlier in the evening. And on the television a few weeks ago. It was the face of Alan Greenspan, the Fed chief. His body was transparent, ghostly, but there was the source of the clanging. For the spectral figure was wrapped up in chains, to which were attached various metals – gold, copper, silver…both coins and nuggets, all clattering and banging against one another. Ebenezer had heard it said that Greenpan lacked guts. But there they were. In this ghostly form Ebenezer could all of him, inside and out. It was as strange as it was unappealing. “Who are you?” asked Ebenezer, his voice cold and caustic. “Ask me who I could be,” replied the phantom. “Okay…who might you be?” “That is a different question,” said the spectre, “but I will answer it anyway. I have no time for word games. I am the spirit of Alan Greenspan…” “I thought so…” whispered Ebenezer. “…and it is required of every man that he walk among men…” “But you are not even dead yet,” protested the old man. “I would know if you were dead…I would have read about it in the paper…” And then, after a pause… “What are these chains you wear?” “They are the chains you forge for yourself. But instead of gold and silver, yours are laden with computer terminals, stock certificates, portfolio statements, the New Era… Amazon.com. You will be fettered not just for your life, but for eternity. And they grow heavier with each passing month. Unless, that is, you heed the ringing of these chains…” “I am here tonight to warn you,” the ghost went on, “that you may have a chance of escaping your fate. Rise and walk with me.” “I am mortal…” “Barely,” said the ghost. “Here, look…Christmas Past: 1980″ Ebenezer could see for himself. There before him was the face of another Fed chief. It was Paul Volcker himself. And there, what was that? A crowd of people were burning him in effigy. But why? Then Ebenezer began to recall what that Christmas was really like: Inflation, measured by the CPI, rose at 13% that year. Volcker’s job was to reduce that figure. He did so. But it was not fun for anyone – except shortsellers. The Dow fell 24% after Volcker held his famous Saturday press conference and announced a change of direction. It took people a while to realize that Volcker, unlike previous Fed chiefs, meant what he said. Volcker threw out the WIN buttons and targeted reserve requirements. Interest rates soared. Twenty-year Treasury bonds yielded 15%. The prime rate hit 21.5% percent. Homebuilders and farmers – and perhaps some Wall Street brokerage houses – threatened his life. The Dow fell to 776. Adjusted for inflation, a generation of capital growth was wiped out. But not everyone was hurt. Investors who bet heavily on gold stocks, oil and collectibles did well – at least, until Volcker’s purposes began to be realized. Ebenezer recalled the predictions of 20 years ago: ** Oil would go to $100 a barrel ** Inflation would be at least 6% – forever ** Gold would rise through the end of the century ** Bonds were “certificates of guaranteed confiscation” ** Stocks were dead (a death that was confirmed by `Business Week’ on Aug. 13, 1980 – the very bottom) ** The whole key to investing was to avoid risk “Let us look a little further,” said the ghost. And with that, Ebenezer saw a new scene. In this one, he saw himself. But it was not himself as he was…but as he had been. There was the young Ebenezer. Full of enthusiasm and eagerness to make his fortune. He had plenty of hair, too. And, look, you could see the muscles bulging beneath his polyester shirt. “These are but shadows of the things that have been,” said the Ghost. And there he was, the young Ebenezer. Standing alone and neglected at a Christmas party several years after Paul Volcker had taken charge of the Fed. He looked quite sad…but Ebenezer knew why at once. “I won’t make that mistake again,” said the young investor to himself. “What mistake had he made?” asked the ghost of his guest. “Why does he reproach himself?” Ebenezer made no reply. Tomorrow: The Ghost of Christmas Present. Bill Bonner Paris, france December 21, 2000 *** Let’s see, if I twist my left leg up to touch my right ear… …I’ve just spent the night on an airplane, contorting myself in different directions in order to try to get comfortable. Then, we got stuck in a traffic jam coming into Paris… so we’re a little late this morning… *** But what can I tell you that you don’t already know? Instead of taking the holiday season off, Mr. Bear is having his revenge. For 18 years, he’s been growling in the wilderness – ignored, dissed, even thought extinct. But he’s back and seems to want everyone to know it. *** It’s very, very unusual for stocks to fall in the last 2 weeks of December, says Richard Russell, but they’re falling anyway. *** The Dow dropped 265 points yesterday. The Nasdaq suffered a 178-point decline. *** Volume was big – as twice as many stocks on the NYSE, and 4 times as many on the Nasdaq, declined as advanced. There were a shocking number of stocks hitting new lows on the Nasdaq – 933. *** What went wrong? Well, nothing…and everything. Merrill Lynch analysts seemed to have gotten up on the wrong side of bed. They downgraded a group of stocks including Cisco, Hewlett-Packard and IBM. The whole crew took a dive, with Cisco down almost 3%…IBM down 4.6%…and HP minus 13%. *** The big tech collapse continued yesterday – with the Internet index down 10% and the big techs down across the board. Amazon.com drifted yet further down the river of no returns – opening at only $16. *** And giant AT&T announced that it was so squeezed for cash it would have to cut the dividend by 83! *** Sic Transit Gloria Mundus – what else can I say? Take eToys, please! The online toy seller was once thought to be worth $1.9 billion. That billion, with a `b’. Now, investors give it a market cap of only $37 million. *** “Given the stunning lack of consumer demand for eToys’ much-enhanced services this season,” wrote a researcher for Robertson Stephens earlier this week, “it is now clear to us that eToys substantially over-spent relative to consumer demand.” *** “People rarely invest based on an ability to tear apart income statements and balance sheets,” writes Doug Casey, “not to mention understand the business firsthand by not only interviewing management and employees, but suppliers and customers. They invest based on what are tantamount to tips and gut feeling. That’s why nobody was in the market in 1982 and why everybody has been in it for the last five years.” *** How times change. Just 6 months ago, many people thought you couldn’t overspend. The sky was the limit. But now…the Summer of Love is gone. The Autumn of Anxiety if passed. And here we are in the Winter of Woe – and all the news is bad news. *** But here at the Daily Reckoning, you are always ahead of the curve – and sometimes around the bend! Investors are beginning to notice what we’ve been talking about for months: the economy is falling apart…the big techs are a death trap for capital…and the dollar is in decline. *** They’re even beginning to wonder whether Alan Greenspan really can save the day. “Wall Street still weighed down by doubt,” says a headline in the Financial Times. If Greenspan can save the day, people wonder, what is he waiting for? *** “The Fed cut rates massively and immediately during the Long Term Capital Management debacle, thus saving the day …” writes fiction writer Paul Erdman. “What is happening in the stock market now could have immeasurably greater consequences. But Greenspan does nothing but issue more enigmatic statements. It is as if Greenspan’s vision is limited to trees such as Long Term Capital and the banks that backed it, but he’s unable to take in what is happening to the forest known as Nasdaq in which most of us have a very significant stake.” *** Don’t worry, Paul, Greenspan will take action. It just won’t do any good. *** The Nasdaq has now surrendered all of its gains since March 1999. Erdman says that the total loss of capital thus far in the bear market is up to $4 trillion. For reference, or amusement, that’s about $40,000 per family. Can the average family afford to lose that much in stocks? We’ll see… *** I love this item: Bryan Piskorowski, analyst for Prudential Securities, is quoted as saying that investors are “groping for a bottom.” Watch out, Bryan, you can get arrested for that. *** But while Bryan and other analysts are groping for the bottom of their dreams, they are grabbing cash. “While many investors have been hammered,” begins a report on the Prudent Bear site, “such a dreadful situation is apparently not going to keep Wall Street employees from big year-end bonuses… “The median bonus for Senior Managing Directors is between $2 and $3 million, Managing Directors (1-3 years) $1 to $1.75 million, Senior Vice President, Director, Principal $850,000-$900,000, Vice President (class of ’94) $750,000- $800,000, Associate (class of ’97) $475,000 to $485,000, and second-year Associate $250,000. And while ridiculous compensation was tolerable during the boom, it’s hard to believe such pay will garner much goodwill going forward. It is certainly interesting how CNBC now mocks Wall Street analysts on a daily basis.” *** The euro rose over 90 cents yesterday. Looking ahead, March contracts have the Esperanto currency up to 91 cents. *** Oil fell $2.19_ but gold rose (Feb. contracts) $2.70. Gold stocks were the big winners yesterday – rising 4%. Afraid of a meltdown in the dollar? Worried about a multi- year bear market on Wall Street? Concerned about debt, defaults, bankruptcies? Don’t worry. Be happy. Sell the rallies. Buy gold stocks, euro bonds, and ultra ugly stocks.. *** What else? Well, Asian stock markets are heavy with techs. And they’re getting hurt. Poor Ms. Wu, remember her? She was moaning and kvetching when her stocks were down 20%. She even joined a demonstration urging the government to “do something.” But what can the government do? Korean stocks are now down 41% for the year. In Taiwan, they’re down almost 50%.

Where to Invest as the US Wallows in “Recovery” Posted: 24 Dec 2013 09:15 AM PST [This article originally appeared in Tomorrow in Review on October 22, 2013] The other day I broke with my oil and mining lifestyle to meet a group of high-tech entrepreneurs. Basically, I was looking for investment perspective and wanted to get out of my “geology” box for a day. That, and it was a good excuse to have lunch at Pittsburgh’s superb Duquesne Club. Here’s some of what I learned… I was in a modest-sized room with people from our local high-tech mills, CMU and the University of Pittsburgh. Plus, the group included tech geeks from locales like Silicon Valley, Boston, Washington (both state and D.C.), North Carolina and Texas. Overall, it was a solid group of really smart people. Pretty much everyone I met is involved with an early stage tech effort. They run small shops with big ambitions. They discussed how much money they raised from the seed-people, angels, mezzanine guys other venture investors. They described how they were pouring bucks into their latest and greatest ideas. Change the world as we know it, right? Still… despite all the MBA-talk, where’s the money? Who is making any money? The discussion touched on all manner of “cloud storage,” business-to-business software (B2B), as well as direct sale concepts that will better enable people to use hand-held social media to spend themselves broke. You want it? Buy it now! That and more. Everyone was bragging about their inspired business models. I don’t doubt for a minute that everyone is pouring heart and soul into their efforts. Then at one point — almost as an offhand comment — I posed a question. “Who here is making any money?” Oh, wow. Every party needs a pooper. That was me. The room went silent. Literally everyone looked at each other kind of sheepishly. One set of eyeballs after another fell as the tech whiz kids closely examined their shoelaces. Of course, people didn’t stay defensive for long. The next round of discussion was along the lines of how fast “enabling tech” is changing. How much money is flowing in. How the customer base is growing. How many eyeballs. All the click-throughs. How one guy’s idea is better at “scraping content” off of sites than some other guy’s idea. How we’re getting “this close” to critical “movement events.” Still… despite all the MBA-talk, where’s the money? Who is making any money? I lived through one dot.com boom-bust back in the 1990s and early 2000s. Are we watching the next one form up? Frankly, I had a sense of deja vu with the tech geeks. I detected the same sense of “hard work, no money” in these early-stage, junior-style techs as I presently see across much of the resource and resource development space. It leads me to think harder about fundamental business models. What works? What doesn’t? In my Outstanding Investments newsletter, I don't normally focus on small plays (aside from an occasional one-off idea). Instead, we focus on large-cap energy, mining and related industrial technology plays. I write about big oil companies, service companies, drillers and such. I follow big mining plays. That is, the average idea is a big company with big assets and big cash flow. There’s typically billions of dollars in market cap, for a company that spends more billions to operate, with billions in sales and raking in profits in the high hundreds of millions if not billions. Well, that’s the idea, anyhow. Assets. Cash flow. We’re not waiting for “movement events.” I want companies that have already moved. Still, not all is wine and roses. For the past 18 months or so, the resource space in general has been tight on the best of days. Overall, resource companies have experienced a continuing upwards cost spiral. Couple this with a price-revenue-share price unwind in the large-cap mining space (and medium- and small-sized plays, too). Part of the hard time is because of the China economic slowdown, with declining prices for commodities, as well as reduced volumes which makes for higher cost per ton. Other aspects of the unwind have to do with economic issues of Europe — Greece, Italy, Spain, etc. Plus there’s less growth momentum in formerly developing economies like Brazil, South Africa, India and many more. Of course, the U.S. still wallows along in a precarious so-called “recovery” — until enough people don’t make any money and it gets worse, speaking of tech startups. Looking at the global picture, where’s the growth? As I noted above, the tech startups with which I met aren’t making much money, despite all the great ideas. Elsewhere in tech-land, the bloom is off the rose even for iconic plays like Apple. After all, how many iPhones can people buy? Getting back to the thesis here, where’s the rising global demand for basic materials? Where’s the pricing strength? Where’s the corporate profitability? Where’s the efficiency that comes from economies of scale? Where’s the value, really? Or put another way, can we count on China to do in the next dozen years what it did in the past dozen? I doubt it. Still, though, I’d rather hold a piece of “real” assets like oil and natural gas, and copper, gold and silver in the ground, than the latest vaporware. Put another way, gold is currently selling at $1,300 per ounce. Yes, the price could fall to $1,000 but it won’t go to zero. You can’t say that about many other things in this world. Now, if only the people who mine the substances can keep their costs down and profitability up. So here we are in October as well. It’s the traditional month for strange things to happen — market crashes and such. It’s the season when the proverbial black swans migrate, so to speak. As of Oct. 1, we’re also captive to the political theater of the so-called “government shutdown.” Wow, talk about a passive aggressive government in which the political powers want to make life miserable for the citizens! As you surely know, the federal budget ran out of juice at midnight on Sept. 30. So the Obama administration immediately closed all manner of federal sites and bureaus. The government of the U.S. is now locked down as tight as politically possible, with the visible emphasis on trivial and petty things like barricading the World War II Memorial at the National Mall. Indeed, we’re witness to an historic, extreme effort by our federal government to make life as inconvenient as possible for the greatest number. And oh by the way, feel free to sign up for Obamacare, too. Investment-wise, what should we be thinking about? Well, I don’t have a bad feeling about the market. Things are muddling along, and the Federal Reserve will apparently keep on propping things up – Yellen or no. Today I kept things general. Soon enough I’ll get very specific in terms of investment ideas and buy-sell calls. That’s all for now. Have a good weekend. Thanks for reading. Best wishes… Byron W. King for The Daily Reckoning P.S. I know you've seen congress bickering. The government shutdown and debt ceiling debate has reached a fever pitch. The media is eating it up, too. But did you know Congress already passed a "secret" – more important – budget? Not only is this "secret" budget not affected by the current shutdown circus, it's presenting a more immediate opportunity for in-the-know readers, like you. I gave readers of the free Tomorrow in Review email edition unfettered access to a new report that details the whole story. If you weren’t among them not to worry. I’ll be sending them this opportunity again in a forthcoming issue. Sign up for FREE, right here, to make sure you don’t miss it.

Thank You, TSA, NSA, FBI, and CIA! Posted: 24 Dec 2013 08:30 AM PST [This article originally appeared in Laissez Faire Today on August 16, 2013] Today, we take time out from our regularly scheduled programming to thank the people who rule us. To the TSA agents at airports… to the IRS agents who audit our tax returns… to the NSA agents who are reading our mail… and to zombies everywhere… To all of you, we'd like to say a heartfelt, "Go f*** yours…" No… no… no… We meant to say, "THANK YOU!' Yes, dear reader, we've got to bring our thinking in line with the prevailing trend. And today, the U.S. is developing a real affection and respect for authority! Americans seem to like to have people rifle through their luggage and pat down their grandmothers at airports, for example. It makes them feel safer. They want someone “in charge” of the U.S. economy too. That's why the new head of the Federal Reserve is so important. What are the requirements for the job? It has to be someone who can keep a secret and tell a joke with a straight face. The secret is that the Federal Reserve can't really control the economy at all. It can influence it. And the influence it has is all negative; that's the joke. By setting interest rates at any level other than that chosen by willing borrowers and lenders, the Fed distorts the price of credit. And distorting prices always leads to problems… either shortages or surpluses. Also, by fixing rates at ultra-low levels, the Federal Reserve is actually stealing from one group and giving to another. The middle class, savers, and working people lose wealth. Hedge fund managers, bankers, zombies… and, of course, those loveable feds themselves… gain. That's why the rich are getting richer, while everyone else loses ground. They call it a “stimulus” program. And they're right, it's very stimulating — for those who get the money. As for the rest — well, the joke's on them! Dear readers should use this period to buy whatever gold they intend to hold through the next phase of the crisis. Prices are low. While they may go lower, you can't count on it. Better to get what you need now. Buy gold now. What's the next phase? Of course, no one knows. But here's what you should be prepared for: Weakening stock and bond prices in the early autumn, followed by a crash in October or November. Gold will rise in anticipation of more Fed action. You might not be aware, but the best candidate to take over at the Federal Reserve after Ben Bernanke leaves is yours truly. But so far, our phone has not rung. And the person not calling is the POTUS, Barack Obama. (We're hoping that this very sincere note of appreciation, respect, and thanks to the feds will help our candidacy.) As the end of Mr. Bernanke's term approaches, if things seem to be going well in the economy, Mr. Obama will go with the safe choice — Janet Yellen. If they are going badly, as in the scenario you should be worried about above, he will go for the bolder candidate, Mr. Summers. Alas, your editor is unlikely to get the nod. The president is too busy claiming to “save the middle class” to spend any time actually trying to figure out what's wrong with the middle class. Since he hasn't figured it out… he won't call the only candidate who could turn things around (albeit, turn things around in a very unpleasant way). If Mr. Summers takes over, we can expect some real excitement. He is less sure of the benefits of quantitative easing than Ms. Yellen. But he is more sure of himself. He will be more direct… So when the sound of helicopters reaches the news media, that is the moment when you will wish you had taken our advice and done your gold shopping now. We don't know what will happen… or when. But no credit-based money system has ever survived a full credit cycle. This will be no exception. But enough of that. Let's talk about something else. Besides, it is not very civic-minded of us to kvetch about our authorities this week. The feds have mounted a full-on charm offensive. From what we read, the progress of mankind depends on them. The feds pass out money as if they were seeking re-election… As long as it's not your money, why not? No kidding. Edward Luce in the Financial Times: “Washington Ain't That Bad.” Clyde Prestowitz: “Thank Washington for Shale Oil.” Martin Wolf: “The State Is the Real Engine of Innovation.” What all these headlines have in common is a kind of breathtaking cloddishness… an appreciation of government that is so naive that you wonder about the species itself: How could the brightest people in the human race be so dull-witted? Of Martin Wolf, we would expect no less. Said to be one of the 100 most influential people on the planet, it just raises questions about the other 99. His influence comes from his post at the Financial Times, where he leads the “pink paper” to its wrongheaded ideas. In his article last week, in the very first sentence, with no hesitation, nor even a qualification, he sets out in the wrong direction: “Growth of output per head determines living standards.” He should have hesitated. Imagine an economy where everyone is given a tiny shovel and told to turn the earth. Then, in an effort to improve output per head, each is given a bigger shovel. Will living standards improve? Not a bit. They are all wasting their time, no matter how much dirt they turn over. Having set out in the wrong direction, naturally, Mr. Wolf soon arrives at the wrong destination. There, he discovers a world well suited only to simple-minded intellectuals — where molecular research, Google's search engine, the Internet itself, and even hydrofracking are the products of what he calls “state-supported innovation.” Of course, the people who supposedly benefit from these innovations are the taxpayers. Do they want them? Do they get their money's worth? Is this the best way to get these benefits? Are they actually beneficial at all… and how does anyone know? The questions never seem to occur to Mr. Wolf. Instead, he accepts the feds' storyline without quibble or irony, and regards the failure to appreciate the feds' contributions as “the greatest threat to rising prosperity.” What? Greater than the lack of real savings? Greater than the burden of crushing debt? Or unfunded pensions? Or overfunded, overleveraged, overhyped speculations? Or jackass economists? Never mind. Meanwhile, here comes Clyde Prestowitz, an agreeable and intelligent man whom we met in Georgetown just last year. “The truth,” he says, “is that virtually none of America’s great inventors and entrepreneurs did it on their own. In the overwhelming majority of cases, they received taxpayer-supported federal help along the way.” When we started our business, we looked around for a place to put it. At the time, the city of Baltimore was such a run-down dump that it was giving away buildings for $1. We took two of them. Was our business also “supported by government”? You bet. It is almost impossible to do anything without receiving some form of taxpayer support. The feds pass out money as if they were seeking re-election. Support the universities? Support research? Support everybody! As long as it's not your money, why not? But does that mean that government funding is an efficient or effective way of allocating capital resources? How do you know if the investment will pay off? With hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of taxpayer money running in every direction, some of it is bound to rub up against something that is actually useful. But why would public officials with no skin of their own in the game do a better job of investing it than the people who earned the money in the first place? It's easy to piddle away money. It's hard to get a good return on it. Nevertheless, Edward Luce looks on Washington with favor. It is “home to some of the brightest people in the U.S.,” he says. Hmmm… We lived in and around Washington for many years. As we recall, the gas station attendants and bootblacks were about as clever as those in any other city. But the closer you got to the halls of power, the more you ran into real nincompoops. Years ago, sharing a car with a member of Congress from California, at first we thought he was just stupid. But after a while, we began to wonder. His conversation was so mindless it was as though it was recorded elevator music playing in a continuous loop. Soothing. Senseless. When he turned his head, we took the opportunity to peer in his ear, thinking we might catch of glimpse of the electronic gear that made him work. We saw nothing but a normal ear… which just goes to show what great advances in bionics the feds have made! But at least Washington has “the decency to apologize for itself,” says Luce. Huh? We can't remember getting an apology. During our lifetime, we estimate that the feds may have squandered as much as $30 trillion. In addition, in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan… they have gotten approximately 2 million people killed… for no apparent gain. Over the years, we have suffered countless imbecilities and indignities, from pointless gas lines and "Whip Inflation Now" buttons in the '70s, to the TSA, the NSA, and a silly “war on terror” today. The war in Iraq alone cost an estimated $5 trillion (most of it still to be paid) and some 100,000 lives. Apology? Public hangings would be more appropriate. But respect for authority is cyclical. And presently, the authorities are enjoying an upswing. People look to them to get things they can't get on their own. Health care paid for by someone else… a retirement they can't afford… and foolish pride they don't deserve. U.S. troops patrol the streets of towns we never heard of… American drones wipe out families we never met… the NSA listens in on the world's conversations… Yes, thanks to the NSA, TSA, CIA, IRS, FBI, and Pentagon, no sparrow can fall anywhere in the world without it setting off alarms in America's command centers. Larceny, bullying, eavesdropping, assassinations… they all help us to stand a little taller and hold our heads a little higher. Thanks, bureaucrats… really. Regards, Bill Bonner for The Daily Reckoning Ed. Note: If you want to keep the bastards off your back, the best thing you can do is be informed. Every single day, The Daily Reckoning email gives readers all the information they need to do just that… along with unique opportunities to safeguard their wealth from the very agencies who are threatening to confiscate it. So don’t wait. Sign up for your FREE subscription to The Daily Reckoning, right now. Original article posted on Laissez Faire Today

J.S. Kim: Of course the big banks predict that gold will crash Posted: 24 Dec 2013 07:49 AM PST 10:46a ET Tuesday, December 24, 2013 Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: Of course big investment houses are predicting that gold will fall in 2014, J.S. Kim of the SmartKnowledgeU investment system and the Underground Investor letter writes today. Gold, he explains, is bad for their business and they have never recommended it during its 12 straight years of gains. Kim's commentary is headlined "All the Big Banks Are Saying Gold Will Crash in 2014 But That's Not What Will Happen" and it's posted at the Smart Knowledge U Internet site here: https://www.smartknowledgeu.com/blog/2013/12/all-the-big-banks-are-sayin... CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc. ADVERTISEMENT Buy metals at GoldMoney and enjoy international storage GoldMoney was established in 2001 by James and Geoff Turk and is safeguarding more than $1.7 billion in metals and currencies. Buy gold, silver, platinum, and palladium from GoldMoney over the Internet and store them in vaults in Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, ­taking advantage of GoldMoney's low storage rates, among the most competitive in the industry. GoldMoney also offers delivery of 100-gram and 1-kilogram gold bars and 1-kilogram silver bars. To learn more, please visit: http://www.goldmoney.com/?gmrefcode=gata Join GATA here: Vancouver Resource Investment Conference Vancouver Convention Centre West Sunday-Monday, January 19-20, 2014 Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada http://www.cambridgehouse.com/event/vancouver-resource-investment-confer... Mines and Money Hong Kong Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre Monday-Friday, March 24-28, 2014 Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China http://www.minesandmoney.com/hongkong/ * * * Support GATA by purchasing DVDs of our London conference in August 2011 or our Dawson City conference in August 2006: http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html Or by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: http://gata.org/tshirts Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: http://www.gata.org To contribute to GATA, please visit: http://www.gata.org/node/16 ADVERTISEMENT How to profit with silver -- and which stocks to buy now Future Money Trends is offering a special 16-page silver report with our forecast for 2013 that includes profiles of nine companies and technical analysis of their stock performance. Six of the companies have market capitalizations of less than $800 million and one company has a market cap of only $30 million. The most exciting of these companies will begin production in a few weeks and has a market cap of just $150 million. Half of all proceeds from the sale of this report will be donated to the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee to support its efforts exposing manipulation and fraud in the gold and silver markets. To learn about this report, please visit: http://www.futuremoneytrends.com/index.php?option=com_content&id=376&tmp...

J.S. Kim: Of course the big banks predict that gold will crash Posted: 24 Dec 2013 07:49 AM PST GATA 10:46a ET Tuesday, December 24, 2013 Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: Of course big investment houses are predicting that gold will fall in 2014, J.S. Kim of the SmartKnowledgeU investment system and the Underground Investor letter writes today. Gold, he explains, is bad for their business and they have never recommended it during its 12 straight years of gains. Kim’s commentary is headlined “All the Big Banks Are Saying Gold Will Crash in 2014 But That’s Not What Will Happen” and it’s posted at the Smart Knowledge U Internet site here: https://www.smartknowledgeu.com/blog/2013/12/all-the-big-banks-are-sayin… CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc. * * * Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: http://www.gata.org To contribute to GATA, please visit: http://www.gata.org/node/16

Angry Bart Chilton takes his parting shot Posted: 24 Dec 2013 07:42 AM PST By William D. Cohan Bloomberg News Tuesday, December 24, 2013 After almost 30 years in Washington, Bart Chilton will soon be taking his leave. For the past 6 1/2 years he has been an outspoken member of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, one of the financial industry's most important regulators. Chilton leaves behind a sobering message: As we long suspected, Wall Street continues to use every trick in its playbook to do whatever it can to eviscerate numerous post-financial-crisis rules. The arsenal includes high-powered lobbyists who outnumber lawmakers 10-1; $1,000-an-hour letter-writing lawyers who gain strength from negotiating over arcana; and the occasional hoodwinking of a president whose knowledge of the ways of finance are close to nil. In a recent interview Chilton said that, despite years of hard work by financial regulators to put the 2010 Dodd-Frank law into force (witness the 882 pages required to explain a 71-page Volcker Rule), their efforts will be futile in the face of Wall Street's money and power. "The lesson for me is: The financial sector is so powerful that they will roll things back over time," Chilton says. "The Wall Street firms have tremendous influence, and they can impact policy to a greater degree than any one regulator or a small group of regulators can." ... ... For the full story: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-24/angry-bart-takes-his-parting-sh... ADVERTISEMENT You Don't Have to Wait for Your Monetary Metal: All Pro Gold Has Product for Immediate Delivery Many investors lately report having to wait weeks and even months for delivery of their precious metal orders. All Pro Gold works with the largest wholesalers that have inventory "live" -- ready to go. All Pro Gold can ship these "live" gold and silver products as soon as payment funds clear. All Pro Gold can provide immediate delivery of 100-ounce Johnson Matthey silver bars, bags of 90 percent junk silver coins, and 1-ounce silver Austrian Philharmonics. All Pro Gold can deliver silver Canadian maple leafs with a two-day delay and 1-ounce U.S. silver eagles with a 15-day delay. Traditional 1-ounce gold bullion coins and mint-state generic gold double eagles are also available for immediate delivery. All Pro Gold has competitive pricing, and its proprietors, longtime GATA supporters Fred Goldstein and Tim Murphy, are glad to answer any questions or concerns of buyers about the acquisition of precious metals and numismatic coins. Learn more at www.allprogold.com or email info@allprogold.com or telephone All Pro Gold toll-free at 1-855-377-4653. Join GATA here: Vancouver Resource Investment Conference Vancouver Convention Centre West Sunday-Monday, January 19-20, 2014 Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada http://www.cambridgehouse.com/event/vancouver-resource-investment-confer... Mines and Money Hong Kong Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre Monday-Friday, March 24-28, 2014 Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China http://www.minesandmoney.com/hongkong/ * * * Support GATA by purchasing DVDs of our London conference in August 2011 or our Dawson City conference in August 2006: http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html Or by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: http://gata.org/tshirts Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: http://www.gata.org To contribute to GATA, please visit: http://www.gata.org/node/16

Fact vs. Fiction - Truth vs. Lies Posted: 24 Dec 2013 07:13 AM PST I was confronted at my tennis club last night by a guy who associates anyone who invests in gold with an obsession with doom and gloom. I guess he thinks that people who move their phony fiat U.S. dollars into gold are trying to get rich at the expense of general despair.  Nothing could be further from the truth in terms of what I would like to be doing vs. what I am doing.  Hell, during the 1990's I was a junk bond trader on Wall Street.  Alan Greenspan's magic money printing press was my best friend.  This particular guy is a real estate broker and his income is a "third" derivative benefit of money printing.  Anyone who works on Wall Street in the type of job I had is not only a direct beneficiary of a promiscuous Federal Reserve printing press, but also skims 90% of that benefit - i.e. a first derivative beneficiary. The funny thing is, anyone who is receiving any benefit from the hyperbolic money printing going on right now is doing so at the expense of others.   So the real estate broker who has seen a "pop" in commissions because the half trillion dollars the Fed has tossed at the real estate market over the last year is benefiting from a temporary and very artificial "pop" in home prices and the related temporary increase in sales volume.  But what about the people who, looking back, will have significantly overpaid for their dream home when this mini-housing bubble collapses?  It's starting to drop pretty quickly already.  Prices from June to now in both new and existing homes have dropped every month since June (See My Article For The Data).  This means that everyone who bought a home in June with a 3.5% FHA down payment mortgage is now underwater on that mortgage.  I have been receiving emails from all over the country from readers describing the same kind of mess that I see all around Denver:  high end homes sitting for months on the market, "for sale" and "coming soon" signs popping up like zits on a teenager and reports from real estate agents that activity has dropped off a cliff in their city. And guess what?  Interest rates are moving higher and the FHA, in a move that was not widely broadcast, is lowering the size of mortgage it will guarantee in 650 counties across the country.  In some cases this reduced mortgage size will be significant, especially in the mini-bubble areas.  As an example, in Clark County Nevada (Las Vegas) the limit is being reduced from $400k to $287,500.  The FHA finances over 20% of the real estate market, up from about 2% in 2008, and it has filled the void created when the big junk mortgage lenders like Countrywide and Wash Mutual went bust in the big housing bubble.  The FHA move will significantly curtail housing market activity.  FNM/FRE are also getting ready to put the squeeze on loose lending standard, but the changes are be deferred for now.  FNM/FRE have their own hidden landmines accumulating. I'm not a prophet of doom and gloom, I'm trying to pull back the curtain of lies and deceit that has become endemic to our system at all levels, especially as it emanates from Wall Street, the Fed and the Government. How about the stock market?  This gentleman mocked me by asserting that the stock market was hitting all-time highs while gold was going lower.  Notwithstanding all of the provable facts about the degree the Fed now intervenes in the all of the markets, let's take a look at some surface facts.  1)  Every time the stock market hits an all-time high, it ultimately suffers a massive drop;  2) margin debt hit a new all-time high - let's see how that worked out the previous two times in the new millennium: (click on graph to enlarge - source: greedometer.com) That doesn't look so promising, does it?  Let's layer on top of that the fact that p/e ratios are currently at all-time highs.  If you strip out the phony mark to market accounting games being played by the financial sector - which represent 25% of the S&P 500 - the p/e ratios are on Pluto;  3) How about that economy?  4.1% GDP growth in Q3, eh?  Well, those who bothered to look beyond the headline nonsense saw that 40% of the headline number is attributable to the massive inventory build that is going on.  This inventory build up is historically unprecedented: (click on graph to enlarge) Not only is this inventory build-up 200% greater than at any time in the last 70 years, but it's nearly 400% greater than the average change in inventory.  Even worse, every time the inventory build has spike up like this, it's been followed by a cliff-drop decline.  There are several other problematic aspects with that latest GDP report which I plan on writing about soon. My point here is that the stock market is not only at an all-time high and at an all-time level of overvaluation, but it also reflects the extreme fraud and manipulation going on behind the headlines and rhetoric.  Just a few more points of fact:   The U.S. Government debt hits a new all-time everyday;  the number of people receiving welfare hits a new all-time high every day;  the percentage of people who are actually employed on a full-time basis as a percentage of the total population declines every day. One last point about the economy.  I had forecast back in November that we would have very disappointing retail sales this holiday season:  Holiday Sales Will Disappoint.  I didn't put that out there because I thrive on doom and gloom, contrary to my acquaintance's assertion.  I put that out there because based on the facts that I was looking at, our economy is dropping off a cliff.  Well guess what?  We already know that retail sales were a bust over the Black Friday weekend.   It turns out that last week through Sunday retail sales dropped 3.1% - that's before stripping out inflation - and shopper traffic dropped 21%:  Retail Sales Tank Before Christmas.   Just one note of observation:  to the extent that online sales might be "cannibalizing" mall traffic, it's a fact that online e-commerce is only 6% of total retail sales.  So don't expect a big contribution from online sales reports even though the year over year percentage headline gains will be big.  As I've discussed ad nauseum, the year over year comparisons right now are exceedingly deceptive. The point of all of this is that I don't feed and thrive on doom and gloom.  What I do thrive on is trying to expose as many people as possible to the truth as supported by the facts about what is really going on in this country.  What is really going on is that our system is collapsing in every aspect:  economically, politically, ethically, spiritually.  And I don't advocate gold because it's a way to make money off of this collapse.  I advocate gold because it's the only I can see that people have a chance of surviving the economic meteor coming at our system.   Anyone who superficially reads the headline business reports or looks at the stock market and thinks things are getting better is not looking at the facts as they exist and the truth as it is.  My only goal is to help people see those facts and then they can draw their own conclusions about the truth. Merry Christmas to all who celebrate the holiday - to everyone else who will be going out for Chinese food tonight (a big Xmas Eve tradition in NYC) have a great day off tomorrow.

Fact vs. Fiction - Truth vs. Lies Posted: 24 Dec 2013 07:13 AM PST I was confronted at my tennis club last night by a guy who associates anyone who invests in gold with an obsession with doom and gloom. I guess he thinks that people who move their phony fiat U.S. dollars into gold are trying to get rich at the expense of general despair.  Nothing could be further from the truth in terms of what I would like to be doing vs. what I am doing.  Hell, during the 1990's I was a junk bond trader on Wall Street.  Alan Greenspan's magic money printing press was my best friend.  This particular guy is a real estate broker and his income is a "third" derivative benefit of money printing.  Anyone who works on Wall Street in the type of job I had is not only a direct beneficiary of a promiscuous Federal Reserve printing press, but also skims 90% of that benefit - i.e. a first derivative beneficiary. The funny thing is, anyone who is receiving any benefit from the hyperbolic money printing going on right now is doing so at the expense of others.   So the real estate broker who has seen a "pop" in commissions because the half trillion dollars the Fed has tossed at the real estate market over the last year is benefiting from a temporary and very artificial "pop" in home prices and the related temporary increase in sales volume.  But what about the people who, looking back, will have significantly overpaid for their dream home when this mini-housing bubble collapses?  It's starting to drop pretty quickly already.  Prices from June to now in both new and existing homes have dropped every month since June (See My Article For The Data).  This means that everyone who bought a home in June with a 3.5% FHA down payment mortgage is now underwater on that mortgage.  I have been receiving emails from all over the country from readers describing the same kind of mess that I see all around Denver:  high end homes sitting for months on the market, "for sale" and "coming soon" signs popping up like zits on a teenager and reports from real estate agents that activity has dropped off a cliff in their city. And guess what?  Interest rates are moving higher and the FHA, in a move that was not widely broadcast, is lowering the size of mortgage it will guarantee in 650 counties across the country.  In some cases this reduced mortgage size will be significant, especially in the mini-bubble areas.  As an example, in Clark County Nevada (Las Vegas) the limit is being reduced from $400k to $287,500.  The FHA finances over 20% of the real estate market, up from about 2% in 2008, and it has filled the void created when the big junk mortgage lenders like Countrywide and Wash Mutual went bust in the big housing bubble.  The FHA move will significantly curtail housing market activity.  FNM/FRE are also getting ready to put the squeeze on loose lending standard, but the changes have been temporarily deferred.  FNM/FRE have their own hidden landmines accumulating. I'm not a prophet of doom and gloom, I'm trying to pull back the curtain of lies and deceit that has become endemic to our system at all levels, especially as it emanates from Wall Street, the Fed and the Government. How about the stock market?  This gentleman mocked me by asserting that the stock market was hitting all-time highs while gold was going lower.  Notwithstanding all of the provable facts about the degree the Fed now intervenes in the all of the markets, let's take a look at some surface facts.  1)  Every time the stock market hits an all-time high, it ultimately suffers a massive drop;  2) margin debt recently hit a new all-time high - let's see how that worked out the previous two times in the new millennium: (click on graph to enlarge - source: greedometer.com) That doesn't look so promising, does it?  Let's layer on top of that the fact that p/e ratios are currently at all-time highs.  If you strip out the phony mark to market accounting games being played by the financial sector - which represent 25% of the S&P 500 - the p/e ratios are on Pluto;  3) How about that economy?  4.1% GDP growth in Q3, eh?  Well, those who bothered to look beyond the headline nonsense saw that 40% of the headline number is attributable to the massive inventory build that is going on.  This inventory build up is historically unprecedented: (click on graph to enlarge) Not only is this inventory build-up 200% greater than at any time in the last 70 years, but it's nearly 400% greater than the average change in inventory.  Even worse, every time the inventory build has spike up like this, it's been followed by a cliff-drop decline.  There are several other problematic aspects with that latest GDP report which I plan on writing about soon. My point here is that the stock market is not only at an all-time high and at an all-time level of overvaluation, but it also reflects the extreme fraud and manipulation going on behind the headlines and rhetoric.  Just a few more points of fact:   The U.S. Government debt hits a new all-time everyday;  the number of people receiving welfare hits a new all-time high every day;  the percentage of people who are actually employed on a full-time basis as a percentage of the total population declines every day. One last point about the economy.  I had forecast back in November that we would have very disappointing retail sales this holiday season:  Holiday Sales Will Disappoint.  I didn't put that out there because I thrive on doom and gloom, contrary to my acquaintance's assertion.  I put that out there because based on the facts that I was looking at, our economy is dropping off a cliff.  Well guess what?  We already know that retail sales were a bust over the Black Friday weekend.   It turns out that last week through Sunday retail sales dropped 3.1% - that's before stripping out inflation - and shopper traffic dropped 21%:  Retail Sales Tank Before Christmas.   Just one note of observation:  to the extent that online sales might be "cannibalizing" mall traffic, it's a fact that online e-commerce is only 6% of total retail sales.  So don't expect a big contribution from online sales reports even though the year over year percentage headline gains will be big.  As I've discussed ad nauseum, the year over year comparisons right now are exceedingly deceptive. The point of all of this is that I don't feed and thrive on doom and gloom.  What I do thrive on is trying to expose as many people as possible to the truth as supported by the facts about what is really going on in this country.  What is really going on is that our system is collapsing in every aspect:  economically, politically, ethically, spiritually.  And I don't advocate gold because it's a way to make money off of this collapse.  I advocate gold because it's the only I can see that people have a chance of surviving the economic meteor coming at our system.   Anyone who superficially reads the headline business reports or looks at the stock market and thinks things are getting better is not looking at the facts as they exist and the truth as it is.  My only goal is to help people see those facts and then they can draw their own conclusions about the truth. One last point of fact:  the U.S. dollar is slowly and subtly being vacated by the global monetary system while gold is slowly being re-introduced.  The Chinese are leading this effort but they have a wide array of economic allies supporting the changes being implemented.  Anyone who moves dollars into gold is going to be better off when the transition to the new global monetary system accelerates.  The U.S. dollar, like all paper fiat currencies before it throughout all of history, will be nothing but a museum relic. Merry Christmas to all who celebrate the holiday - to everyone else who will be going out for Chinese food tonight (a big Xmas Eve tradition in NYC) have a great day off tomorrow.

The Chinese Monopoly of 2014 Posted: 24 Dec 2013 06:00 AM PST [This article originally appeared in The Daily Resource Hunter on February 25, 2013] "For him, hoarding silver is not just his way of hedging inflation: It is also part of his attempt to create his own independent economy, his own money." – Harry Hurt III What if I told you, by January 2014, the price of silver is set to jump 525%. From its current price around $28/oz, the metal will subsequently rise to $175/oz. – and yes, in less than 12 months. You'd think I was crazy, right? Today I want to show you why history says I'm not… "IN THE SUMMER of 1979, an invisible hand reached out from an island in the Atlantic and quietly began tightening its grip on the world's supply of silver" Harry Hurt III penned in the September issue of Playboy in 1980. In an article titled "Silverfinger," Hurt wrote the tale of the Hunt brothers' activities between the spring of 1979 and January 1980. The Hunt family had wealth. Texas-sized, oil wealth in the billions. Continuing their father's business, but also living in the shadow of his legacy, Nelson Bunker Hunt, along with brothers Herbert and Lamar were on a mission to grow the family's wealth. So in the 70's when inflation started eating away at the family oil fortune the Hunt brothers started buying silver. Smartly, may I add, in an effort to avoid government confiscation the brothers personally transported it to a vault in Switzerland. It was the beginning of the gutsiest, daylight heist ever witnessed – and today it can point to our next opportunity in the metals market. Indeed, the summer of 1979 taught us an important lesson – somewhat forgot in today's daily press – that finite resources trade in fragile markets. Back then, Bunker Hunt, a Texas oilman along with a few rich Saudi businessmen, was able to bring the market, for one of history's most coveted metals, to its knees. In the 11 months following February 1979 the price of silver jumped from $8 to a high of $50 – marking a 525% rise. Take a look:  (Note, this is a daily chart, so the intra-day high of $50 in 1980 is subdued) Indeed, the real-life drama that unraveled that year was better than fiction. I mean really, who would have thought a few of the world's elite could snatch up nearly all of the marketable silver on the planet. But they did! Here's a timeline of events, outlined by silver trader Larry Laborde: Summer of 1979: the Hunt brothers started buying silver through the International Metal Investment group along with their Saudi partners. Fall of 1979: the silver price doubled from $8 to $16/oz in only two months. The COMEX and the CBOT started to panic. Many people, including the Hunts through their International Metal Investment group were taking delivery on all their contracts! Late in 1979: the CBOT changed the rules and stated that no investor could hold over 3 million oz of silver contracts and the margin requirement were raised. The price on the last day of 1979 was $34.45/oz. At this point Bunker and Herbert held 40 million oz in Switzerland and 90 million oz of bullion they jointly owned through International Metals. January 7th 1980: the COMEX changed their rules to only allow 10 million/oz of contracts per trader and that all contracts over that amount must be liquidated before February 18th. January 17th 1980: silver hit $50/oz, At that point in time the Hunt's silver position was worth $4.5 billion dollars bringing their profits in silver to $3.5 billion dollars. January 21st 1980: the COMEX announced that it was suspending trading in silver. They would only accept liquidation orders. Silver dropped $10/oz and stayed around $39/oz until the end of January. March 14th 1980: silver was down to $21/oz. In the months following this massive silver spike, prices pulled back, finally reaching a baseline price of $5-10/oz. Through the fiasco, the Hunt brothers lost a substantial fortune (through market losses and fines) and were treated to more than one court hearing. No jail-time though (I guess those were the good old days.) The major question that people ask when they hear this story is: "why?"  And other than the quick answer, "to make money", there's a deeper emotion than just greed. Indeed, the main reason why this silver grab began was fear.  Here's another telling comment that Hurt penned in Playboy's pages: "The government treasuries of the world used to be the ones to issue currencies backed by precious metals. Like the United States, most countries have long since ceased that practice. Bunker has been trying to revive it for himself and his silver buying partners. Hoarding silver is part of his scheme to replace paper with something of "real" value. It is his hedge against the "avalanche of evil" he fears is engulfing the world. Ironically, it was also what brought about a personal and public financial apocalypse of the first order." Bunker Hunt had a lot of the same fears that you and I share. He worried about his wealth, the government's growing budget and the Fed's propensity to print first and ask questions later. Hunt, of course, took his fear and greed to a level that only a cowboy from Texas could. Quite a show, might I add. Besides the spectacle, though, this story acts as a great, modern day example of how currencies and the world's finite resources commingle. Also, it's a great example as to how hard assets can explode in value — something that could be coming down the pike, sooner than you think… Indeed, history doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes. China is this generation's version of the Hunt brothers. Only instead of having the faults and worries of a single person/family, China plays by its own rules. You can see this in the recent espionage case – where China is accused of hacking into various American companies for the gain of their country.  If any person/family/group were to hack into Coca Cola or Ford and steal information that benefits a financial negotiation or business deal, you can rest assure they'd be burned at the stake – or in today's case, put behind bars for a long time. Who knows, maybe a one way ticket to Gitmo. But that's not the case with a sovereign nation, especially one as strategic as China. So far the country has denied claims that its government participated in the hacking. "It wasn't us" they say, as they retract back into their secretive, communist shell. So you see, this time around – whether it's gold, silver, rare earths, copper, oil or any other of the world's coveted resources – China is upping the ante. The Chinese don't have to play by the rules of the U.S. sandbox, they don't have to disclose their gold holdings or admit wrongdoing in a hacking allegation – instead, thus far, they just deny or remain quiet. Along with upping the ante, the Chinese have another strategic advantage. The Hunt brothers cornering of the silver market gave China a playbook. China knows that they can't buy massive amounts of silver or gold on the open market and expect to take delivery. During the Hunt brothers attempt to corner the silver market the COMEX changed the rules. Limiting the amount that one person could hold and upping the margin requirements to control trading. Likewise, the U.S. government stepped in during the bankruptcy trial. The Hunt brothers owed a lot of money – somewhere to the tune of $1.5B – so much so that a bank-backed bailout was prescribed. Trading regulations and government involvement? Rule changes and bailouts? That's just a few of the out-of-the-box actions that China plans to avoid. Indeed, the Chinese have history as their guide. And where the Hunt bros. fell short, China will likely succeed. One recent example of China's strategic nature is the 2010/2011 rare earth supply crunch. When China realized the card it held, it quickly recoiled and unveiled export quotas for rare earths, a group of specialty metals vital to modern technology. Then, after they'd made some quick cash and the outcries got louder, China retracted their quotas. They played the game and they played it well. I don't have to be the first to tell you that if China had a full monopoly – meaning no other locale could produce rare earths – they would have increased their grip strength and constricted the market into submission. Instead, they saw the writing on the wall, others had rare earths and it was only a matter of time before they ramped up supply – so naturally the Chinese retracted their monopoly power. The rare earth squeeze was just a preview of what the Chinese are capable of. And the recent espionage allegations follow suit (what a way to start off the year of the snake, eh?) Looking forward, the one market that still has the ability to be cornered, as shown 1979/1980, is the precious metals market. And just like it would have paid to hold your share of precious metals back when the Hunt bros made their run at silver, it's even more vital today.  After all, the Hunt brothers were just trying to make and protect their money, whereas China's ambitions could be much more sinister. As the year of the snake continues, keep your eye to the East. Keep your boots muddy, Matt Insley for The Daily Reckoning P.S. I’ve been keeping my eye on the East for several years now. And what I’ve found is pretty shocking. Make sure you’re up to date on all the relevant info. Sign up for my Daily Resource Hunter email edition, and learn how to profit, no matter what happens in 2014.

Silver Bells Ringing Price Bottom? Posted: 24 Dec 2013 01:21 AM PST I would like to wish each of our readers, subscribers, partners, and supporters a delightfully enlightened and prosperous holiday season. Although no one literally rings any bells at market tops or bottoms, let me just state that there is strong technical evidence for a multi-generational bottom in silver occurring some time in 2014, and leave it at that. Click here for the entertaining prophecy and here for some final downside targets before this mother of all bull markets ignites. Below are the unfolding charts.

Shane Nagle: Making Your Portfolio Pricing-Pressure Proof Posted: 24 Dec 2013 12:00 AM PST Forget about the gold price. Forget about the copper, zinc and nickel price. Start searching out companies that can weather another few years of recovery, because it's unlikely mining companies will... Visit the aureport.com for more information and for a free newsletter

Shane Nagle: Making Your Portfolio Pricing-Pressure Proof Posted: 24 Dec 2013 12:00 AM PST Forget about the gold price. Forget about the copper, zinc and nickel price. Start searching out companies that can weather another few years of recovery, because it's unlikely mining companies will get any price relief soon. Shane Nagle, a metals and mining analyst with National Bank Financial, talks with The Mining Report about some names he's found that have strong balance sheets that can carry them through another few years of pricing pressures to smooth sailing on the other side.

Shane Nagle: Making Your Portfolio Pricing-Pressure Proof Posted: 24 Dec 2013 12:00 AM PST Forget about the gold price. Forget about the copper, zinc and nickel price. Start searching out companies that can weather another few years of recovery, because it's unlikely mining companies will get any price relief soon. Shane Nagle, a metals and mining analyst with National Bank Financial, talks with The Mining Report about some names he's found that have strong balance sheets that can carry them through another few years of pricing pressures to smooth sailing on the other side.

Obamacare Support at Record Low 35%; Obamacare Named "Lie of the Year"; Bait and Switch; Obamacare Roundup; Meltdown Coming? Posted: 23 Dec 2013 08:09 PM PST It's been a while since I commented on Obamacare. Given news comes out every day, nearly all of it negative, I have shown restraint. Tonight, here's a recap of what you may have missed. Read More...

Turk reflects on 2013 and introduces new book, 'The Money Bubble' Posted: 23 Dec 2013 06:39 PM PST 9:30p ET Monday, December 23, 2013 Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: While 2013 has been a disappointing year for gold and silver, in an interview today with King World News GoldMoney founder and GATA consultant James Turk tries to put it in context. The monetary metals have had many years of increases against one bad year, he notes, and metal in hand still has no counterparty risk even as counterparty risk is growing throughout the world. An excerpt from the interview is posted at the King World News blog here: http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2013/12/23_B... Turk elaborates on counterparty risk in his new book written with John Rubino, "The Money Bubble." Introducing the book in an essay at GoldMoney's Internet site, Turk elaborates on this point. Payment in gold concludes a transaction, he writes, while payment in government currency is actually acceptance of a central bank's promise to pay, the liability of a central bank. Turk's commentary about his new book is headlined "James Turk Launches New Book -- 'The Money Bubble: What to Do Before It Pops'" and it's posted at GoldMoney's Internet site here: http://www.goldmoney.com/research/analysis/james-turk-launches-new-book-... CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc. ADVERTISEMENT Buy metals at GoldMoney and enjoy international storage GoldMoney was established in 2001 by James and Geoff Turk and is safeguarding more than $1.7 billion in metals and currencies. Buy gold, silver, platinum, and palladium from GoldMoney over the Internet and store them in vaults in Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, ­taking advantage of GoldMoney's low storage rates, among the most competitive in the industry. GoldMoney also offers delivery of 100-gram and 1-kilogram gold bars and 1-kilogram silver bars. To learn more, please visit: http://www.goldmoney.com/?gmrefcode=gata Join GATA here: Vancouver Resource Investment Conference Vancouver Convention Centre West Sunday-Monday, January 19-20, 2014 Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada http://www.cambridgehouse.com/event/vancouver-resource-investment-confer... Mines and Money Hong Kong Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre Monday-Friday, March 24-28, 2014 Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China http://www.minesandmoney.com/hongkong/ * * * Support GATA by purchasing DVDs of our London conference in August 2011 or our Dawson City conference in August 2006: http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html Or by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: http://gata.org/tshirts Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: http://www.gata.org To contribute to GATA, please visit: http://www.gata.org/node/16 ADVERTISEMENT How to profit with silver -- and which stocks to buy now Future Money Trends is offering a special 16-page silver report with our forecast for 2013 that includes profiles of nine companies and technical analysis of their stock performance. Six of the companies have market capitalizations of less than $800 million and one company has a market cap of only $30 million. The most exciting of these companies will begin production in a few weeks and has a market cap of just $150 million. Half of all proceeds from the sale of this report will be donated to the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee to support its efforts exposing manipulation and fraud in the gold and silver markets. To learn about this report, please visit: http://www.futuremoneytrends.com/index.php?option=com_content&id=376&tmp...

Turk reflects on 2013 and introduces new book, ‘The Money Bubble’ Posted: 23 Dec 2013 06:39 PM PST GATA 9:30p ET Monday, December 23, 2013 Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: While 2013 has been a disappointing year for gold and silver, in an interview today with King World News GoldMoney founder and GATA consultant James Turk tries to put it in context. The monetary metals have had many years of increases against one bad year, he notes, and metal in hand still has no counterparty risk even as counterparty risk is growing throughout the world. An excerpt from the interview is posted at the King World News blog here: http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2013/12/23_B… Turk elaborates on counterparty risk in his new book written with John Rubino, “The Money Bubble.” Introducing the book in an essay at GoldMoney’s Internet site, Turk elaborates on this point. Payment in gold concludes a transaction, he writes, while payment in government currency is actually acceptance of a central bank’s promise to pay, the liability of a central bank. Turk’s commentary about his new book is headlined “James Turk Launches New Book — ‘The Money Bubble: What to Do Before It Pops’” and it’s posted at GoldMoney’s Internet site here: http://www.goldmoney.com/research/analysis/james-turk-launches-new-book-… CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc. * * * Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: http://www.gata.org To contribute to GATA, please visit: http://www.gata.org/node/16

The Gold Price and Its Cycle | Mike Maloney & James Turk Posted: 23 Dec 2013 06:39 PM PST James Turk and Michael Maloney of GoldSilver.com describe the gold price cycle in this video. [[ This is a content summary only. Visit http://www.GoldSilverNewsBlog.com or http://www.newsbooze.com or http://www.figanews.com for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Do I Hear Bells Ringing for a Bottom in Silver? Posted: 23 Dec 2013 06:20 PM PST I would like to wish each of our readers, subscribers, partners, and supporters a delightfully enlightened and prosperous holiday season. Although no one literally rings any bells at market tops or bottoms ... Read More...

Dominican Republic gold rush vexed by bureaucracy Posted: 23 Dec 2013 06:13 PM PST The country remains an enticing prospect for the mining sector but government positivity toward the sector is being slowed by bureaucratic delays and poor historical environmental performance. Read more….

Hedge funds cut bullish gold bets amid record outflows Posted: 23 Dec 2013 05:41 PM PST Money managers reduced their net-long position by 2.8 percent to 32,524 futures and options in the week ended Dec. 17, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission data show Read more….

Barrick Gold to sell Plutonic Mine to Northern Star Posted: 23 Dec 2013 05:35 PM PST The gold digger has agreed to sell the Western Australian mine for $22m in a bid to further focus on its most profitable operations. Read more….

Eric Sprott's best interview yet; fame for Bill Murphy will mark gold's top Posted: 23 Dec 2013 05:21 PM PST 8:17p ET Monday, December 23, 2013 Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: Sprott Asset Management CEO Eric Sprott has given what may be his best interview yet -- to USAWatchdog's Greg Hunter -- and it may be his best because he admits being a little aggravated by the counterintuitive action in the markets lately, particularly, of course, in gold and silver, where prices have fallen despite exploding demand. This can have happened, Sprott says, only because of central bank intervention in the markets. Sprott believes that Western central banks told the Indian government, "You've got to stop your people from buying gold, because there isn't any gold left." (Rather than recognize the potential for its country to gain wealth and power, the Indian government of course took orders as if it was still a colonial subject.) Sprott says he thinks the key signal about the exhaustion of Western central bank gold reserves was the German Bundesbank's inability this year to repatriate more than 20 percent of its gold from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in less than seven years. ... Dispatch continues below ... ADVERTISEMENT Buy metals at GoldMoney and enjoy international storage GoldMoney was established in 2001 by James and Geoff Turk and is safeguarding more than $1.7 billion in metals and currencies. Buy gold, silver, platinum, and palladium from GoldMoney over the Internet and store them in vaults in Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, ­taking advantage of GoldMoney's low storage rates, among the most competitive in the industry. GoldMoney also offers delivery of 100-gram and 1-kilogram gold bars and 1-kilogram silver bars. To learn more, please visit: http://www.goldmoney.com/?gmrefcode=gata Another signal, Sprott says, has been the occasional suspension of coin sales by the U.S. Mint, indicating that metal hasn't been available. The interview is 22 minutes long and can be watched at USAWatchdog here: http://usawatchdog.com/what-happens-when-you-have-to-admit-the-golds-not... Meanwhile, interviewed by Al Korelin of the Korelin Economics Report, 321Gold.com proprietor Bob Moriarty defends Sprott against an unflattering article published this month by The Wall Street Journal (http://www.gata.org/node/13364). Moriarty says that the Journal's article will mark the bottom of the gold market and that the gold market's top will be signified when the cover of Time magazine features GATA Chairman Bill Murphy. True enough, maybe, but the mainstream financial news media are not likely to accept the fact of gold market manipulation any time soon, and that would give gold's bull market many more years to run. Besides, like Doctor Hook and the Medicine Show, Murphy and his GATA followers probably would settle for the cover of Rolling Stone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ux3-a9RE1Q Korelin's interview with Moriarty is eight minutes long and can be heard here: http://www.kereport.com/2013/12/22/defense-eric-sprott/ CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc. * * * Join GATA here: Vancouver Resource Investment Conference Vancouver Convention Centre West Sunday-Monday, January 19-20, 2014 Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada http://www.cambridgehouse.com/event/vancouver-resource-investment-confer... Mines and Money Hong Kong Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre Monday-Friday, March 24-28, 2014 Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China http://www.minesandmoney.com/hongkong/ * * * Support GATA by purchasing DVDs of our London conference in August 2011 or our Dawson City conference in August 2006: http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html Or by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: http://gata.org/tshirts Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: http://www.gata.org To contribute to GATA, please visit: http://www.gata.org/node/16 ADVERTISEMENT How to profit with silver -- and which stocks to buy now Future Money Trends is offering a special 16-page silver report with our forecast for 2013 that includes profiles of nine companies and technical analysis of their stock performance. Six of the companies have market capitalizations of less than $800 million and one company has a market cap of only $30 million. The most exciting of these companies will begin production in a few weeks and has a market cap of just $150 million. Half of all proceeds from the sale of this report will be donated to the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee to support its efforts exposing manipulation and fraud in the gold and silver markets. To learn about this report, please visit: http://www.futuremoneytrends.com/index.php?option=com_content&id=376&tmp...

Monetary Metals Supply and Demand Report Posted: 23 Dec 2013 05:15 PM PST The dollar made a multiyear high, closing on Thursday at over 26mg gold! Not even the Fed's propaganda squad would trumpet this as good news and not in this way. And, of course, the gold bugs regard it as bad news. Read More...

What Happens When You Have to Admit the Gold’s Not There-Eric Sprott Posted: 23 Dec 2013 04:17 PM PST By Greg Hunter's USAWatchdog.com (Early Sunday Release) Dear CIGAs, Money manager Eric Sprott says the economy is going to tank in 2014.  Sprott, who has $8 billion under management, contends, "We have created a situation, yet again, where we pulled demand forward and added debt to everyone's balance sheet."  Another drag is going to be... Read more » The post What Happens When You Have to Admit the Gold’s Not There-Eric Sprott appeared first on Jim Sinclair's Mineset.

In Post-Crisis World, Central Banks Strengthening Ties With Dollar Posted: 23 Dec 2013 04:00 PM PST The Federal Reserve and the central banks of England, the euro area, Japan, Switzerland and Canada have agreed to make bilateral swap lines permanent.

100 Years Of Monetary Socialism Is Enough! Posted: 23 Dec 2013 03:36 PM PST In this article, Claudio Grass looks back at 100 years US FED. He answers the question how much real added value the US central bank has been creating. With his specialism in monetary history, Claudio Grass is in a position to provide a sound fundamental view with factual answers. This article comes from the latest Global Gold Outlook Report, released earlier today. Read the full report or subscribe for future updates on www.globalgold.ch. Exactly one hundred years ago on December 23rd 1913 the Federal Reserve Act was signed into law by President Wilson. At least in retrospect this was a truly sad day for financial liberty in the United States and indeed the whole world, due to the reserve status of the US Dollar. In this article I do not want to go into the intricacies in regard to the establishment of the FED nor the special interests behind our current monetary system (you can have a look at our previous Outlook for more on the topic). Most of the readers are familiar with the dire consequences of having a central bank, therefore I will also not repeat the obvious and tell you how much the purchasing power of the Dollar has decreased nor talk about how our current monetary system leads to artificial booms and busts or fosters malinvestment. What I will be talking about is why I believe that, regardless of the above mentioned, the existence of a central bank is wrong and why it not only resembles but is pure socialism. According to the Webster dictionary, socialism is the following: A way of organizing a society in which major industries are owned and controlled by the government rather than by individual people and companies. So what does the government monopoly over money have to do with socialism or the definition above? Even under the assumption that the only power, the government, has is to issue money, this implies that the government has control not only over every "major industry", but every industry and every contractual relationship in a country! How? Every contract or the vast majority of contracts oblige at least one party to pay a sum in Dollars. By having control of currency and specifically the money supply, the FED can control what the Dollar is worth. The tendency in the long run has been a depreciating value of the currency favoring the debtor (if the opposite where true, the FED would still be favoring one party). By influencing the value of the Dollar they have direct control over every contract in the country. They can actually decide if binding contracts can be retroactively adjusted to the detriment of the creditor or debtor (on an aggregate level). This power not only affects industries, but every part of our lives such as rent contracts or work contracts. Even if you have a simple deal with your neighbor's son to mow your lawn for the whole year for a fix fee of X Dollars, this contract is influenced by the monetary policy of the FED. Isn't that pretty much sounding like absolute control over every aspect of our lives? After covering the aspects of control let's continue with ownership. Although the control of a country's currency does not automatically imply ownership of the country's assets, it does if one takes into account a further aspect of the government: Taxes. The taxing authority in itself implies that the government has (partial) ownership of your assets or at least the return your assets generate. However, you are always taxed on nominal returns! In connection with the control of money supply this means that even when you are not earning any sort of income or even losing money in real terms the government has a "right" to receive a part of your wealth on a continuous basis. The right to tax in connection with the control over the money supply gives the government the power to determine the tax revenue they want or need to generate. So what do you really own in the true sense of the word? I would like to sum up with a quote from Mises' book on socialism. The quote is in the context of the impossibility of socialism, because of the lack of a market price. However it is just as applicable to the fixing of the interest rates by the FED. "Without calculation, economic activity is impossible. Since under Socialism economic calculation is impossible, under Socialism there can be no economic activity in our sense of the word … All economic change, therefore, would involve operations the value of which could neither be predicted beforehand nor ascertained after they had taken place. Everything would be a leap in the dark. Socialism is the renunciation of rational economy." This article comes from the latest Global Gold Outlook Report, released earlier today. Read the full report or subscribe for future updates on www.globalgold.ch.

Jesse Livermore Gold Trading Signal Posted: 23 Dec 2013 03:23 PM PST Time to review a Jesse Livermore trade setup on Gold ETF (GLD). Read More...

Money, Gold And Liberty – What Has Changed In 2013? Posted: 23 Dec 2013 02:59 PM PST In this article, Claudio Grass looks back and answers the question what really changed in 2013 when it comes to money, (physical) gold and liberty. In his position of managing director at Global Gold Switzerland, he is in touch with a lot of people in the gold industry. Besides, his expertise in monetary history helps him to provide sound and fundamental views on money and currency. This article comes from the latest Global Gold Outlook Report, released earlier today. Read the full report or subscribe for future updates on www.globalgold.ch. The last year has been an interesting year in many respects, especially for precious metals. We saw strange fluctuations in the gold price, mainly because of the paper market, and also "creative" ideas by governments on how to control their citizens and their wealth. It seems that on a daily basis more and more is uncovered on how the US is spying on its citizens through the NSA. Also FATCA, which will be implemented shortly, will make all financial assets of US persons transparent to the IRS. What about: Privacy? Democracy? And above all: Liberty? Sadly, we think that these principles have been thrown overboard and it is unlikely that the infringements of natural rights will end any time soon. In the following I would like to share my personal thoughts about how I experienced the past twelve months and what key elements I am focusing on. I can tell you what I am not focusing on: the mainstream media. I recently came across the following quote by Professor Mark Crispin Miller: "Media manipulation in the U.S. today is more efficient than it was in Nazi Germany, because here we have the pretense that we are getting all the information we want. That misconception prevents people from even looking for the truth." I believe that this is not only true for the US, but also for most of the other countries across the globe. The media has become the main propaganda tool of governments and large corporations. In the United States, six corporations control 90% of what people read, watch and listen to. If you are looking for valuable information you need to look beyond the mainstream media. This is what we have been trying to do since the very beginning with our different reports and articles. Gold is your insurance! A few weeks ago, while having dinner in Zurich I had a conversation with a conservative Swiss Banker, working for one of the oldest private banks in Switzerland. When I told him what we do at Global Gold he said: "So you work with the real stuff – dealing with real money!". He went on to tell me that he holds physical gold as his own personal insurance. His remarks highlight the most important aspect why someone should hold physical precious metals. Gold is not a speculative vehicle, but rather an insurance policy against the collapse of the financial and monetary system. Neither my clients nor I know exactly when the collapse will take place, however we are all convinced that it is long overdue and will happen eventually due to the unsustainability of the current system. What has changed since the price decrease of more than 700 USD since the peak in 2011? Absolutely nothing! Fiat currency is not real money! J.P. Morgan once said: "Gold is money – everything else is credit". Although I don't share a lot in common with the Morgans, I fully agree with this quote. What most people consider money today is nothing more than debt! I am critic of un-backed currencies in general, a credit-based monetary system is, however, much more dangerous than "simply" having an un-backed currency. A backed currency, such as a gold standard, restricts the powers that be from issuing new currency whenever they need it. Our credit or debt-based system however implies that no matter what happens, the money supply has to be constantly increased, because as everyone knows debts need to be repaid with interest. Assuming a constant velocity of money over time, there is no way the debt, which is the basis of our money, can be repaid if the money supply is not increased. The system is, therefore, inflationary in its root and is bound to fail in the long run. As Voltaire already noted: "Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value – zero." The only question is not if but rather when. Will the money printing stop? No! The FED announcing that it will reduce its asset purchasing program by 10 billion on a monthly basis is like an arsonist saying "I will use a bit less gasoline in the future". I am confident that real interest rates will stay low for the foreseeable future. Why? First, I believe that the CPI is manipulated in favor of the government. If you take the statistics calculated by Shadow Stats, for example, the current US inflation figure is closer to 5%. One-year government bond yields would have to increase almost 40-fold to come close to that number. That isn't really a likely scenario with the debt levels worldwide standing where they are today. Governments simply cannot afford to pay more interest on their debt. Secondly, I am an Austrian. To me, inflation is the increase in the money supply per se; this means that I don't measure the debasement of a currency by an arbitrary basket of goods (CPI) defined by the government. Newly created money doesn't flow evenly into an economy and lead to a steady increase in all prices. Although we have hardly seen any increase in the CPI figures, we have seen other prices increase, mainly asset prices! Keynes is dead! Sometimes I feel like a broken record, however I can't stop myself from emphasizing what I think is the biggest problem of our times: DEBT! Roghoff and Reinhard said once that the 5 most expensive words in history have been "this time it's different". I agree, this time will not be different! The most optimistic scenario I can think of (with today's debt levels) is an average double-digit inflation rate over the next 10 years, which will reduce the debt levels of governments back to sustainable levels. It seems to me that most central bankers worldwide have dismissed the ideas of the beloved and "prudent" Keynes and have adopted Gono-Economics as their leading economic theory. As you might know Gideo Gono is and has been the governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe since 2003. In this time he has helped make Zimbabwe one of the most prosperous nations on this earth and has created more (nominal) wealth than all of the world's central bankers put together! No more property rights? Almost! What we have seen until now is just a foretaste. The bail-in in Cyprus, the restructuring of debt in Greece and of course the negative interest rates are all just the beginning of much bigger things to come. Wealth redistribution by means such as higher taxation, negative interest rates and outright confiscation will intensify in the coming years. The IMF recently came out with a report in which they analyze the benefits of a "one-time" wealth tax of 10% on government debt levels. Confiscation or other measures can happen in any country, I do think, however, that it is a prudent approach to keep one's wealth in a country such as Switzerland. Why? Switzerland has a federalist system of government, which limits the power of central government and has a long-standing history of respecting property rights. More importantly, however, Switzerland is in a very sound fiscal state. Such countries are not only unlikely to confiscate, they simply have no need to do so. Monetary history as you compass in turbulent times My mentor Ferdinand Lips always told me that teaching and talking about monetary history is one of the most important things we can do, because there is a deep misconception regarding this issue. This is especially true today, a time where understanding monetary history is more important than ever. This is one of the reasons, why we have started a series of book summaries. In this Outlook you will find a summary of Lips' "Gold Wars". I cannot think of a book that has impacted me and the way I understand the world more than this book. I really hope that you enjoy the summary and also find the time to read the full book. As Mark Twain said: "History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.". Therefore everyone should understand the details of monetary history to understand how to prepare for the times ahead. Changes during the past year If you look beyond the noise of the price fluctuations in the paper gold prices you will realize that nothing has substantially changed or at least nothing, which negatively impacts the reason, why my clients and I personally hold gold. If anything, everything I have mentioned until now is an indication that the reasons why most people hold gold are more relevant and actual than ever. The mainstream media seems to have a different opinion. The physical gold market, however, speaks a completely different language. The Chinese and the Asians in general are buying gold like there is no tomorrow and all the refineries I deal with are still reporting massive delays because they are unable to cope with the high demand. I personally have been accumulating gold since 2003, when I first came in contact with monetary history through Ferdinand Lips. What do I do when the insurance premium on the health insurance cover I couldn't afford just a couple of months ago becomes 30% cheaper? I buy it! I simply do the same for my insurance against a monetary collapsed. In my view that is the only prudent thing to do. This article comes from the latest Global Gold Outlook Report, released earlier today. Read the full report or subscribe for future updates on www.globalgold.ch.

Christmas Wishes Posted: 23 Dec 2013 02:58 PM PST Santa: The following are our Christmas wishes for the bottom 95% of Americans – as measured by either income or total assets. A People's QE: The Fed creates $85,000,000,000 (perhaps reducing to $75 Billion in January) per month – Quantitative Easing or QE – and feeds it to the bankers, the wealthy, and the politicians. A people's QE is for the Quality Enhancement of the bottom 95% – an additional $85,000,000,000 per month distributed to 315 million people in the U.S. Santa: please deliver $ 270 to each person monthly or, at current prices, about 14 ounces of silver per person per month or about 3 ounces of gold per person every 14 months. CONGRESS It would be grand if congressional approval ratings stayed above 70% because congressional actions beneficially represented the nation and the needs of the people instead of large corporate interests and their own payoffs. Santa: we know this is probably hopeless, but please make congress and the government more truthful. JOBS FOR AMERICANS Does shipping jobs offshore and closingfactories make America stronger and a better place to live? The "profit for me but unemployment for you" approach is not a good plan. Santa: please open American factories and create more local jobs. FINANCIAL INDUSTRY We pray for a new financial industry that encourages a productive economy instead of gouging the middle class to promote CEO bonuses. Santa: this is a tough one, but your helpwould be appreciated. HEALTH Most of us would benefit from a medical profession that encourages good health, prevention, and sane living instead of highly profitable sick care, huge medical expenses, and the "take a pill" mentality promoted by the big Pharmaceutical companies. Santa: we need healthier food, less drugs, more exercise, and fewer destructive habits. FAIR MARKETS Price fixing, such as in the markets for LIBOR,currencies, bonds, gold, silver, and crude oil damage the integrity and credibility of markets and hurt the lower 95% with a higher cost of living. However, price fixing enhances banker bonuses. Santa: please help the 95%! HONEST MONEY Does it make sense that the dollars EARNED by actual work are valued the same as the "funny money" dollars that the Fed "prints?" Santa: please bring honest money back to our world. PEACE ON EARTH War is highly profitable for many businesses but it kills and hurts people. Santa: please inspire peace and good will in the hearts of the warmongers. My Christmas Wish is that we will live in a better world that includes honestmoney, real markets, and individual good health. Have a warm and loving Christmas and a 2014 filled with more hard assets and fewer paper assets. GE Christenson, aka Deviant Investor

Russ Winter: China successfully hunts where there is gold Posted: 23 Dec 2013 02:57 PM PST 5:57p ET Monday, December 23, 2013 Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: The work of GATA consultant Koos Jansen and our friend Turd Ferguson is cited at length in commentary by financial letter writer and former stockbroker Russ Winter, who sees high probability that JPMorganChase's recent turn long in the gold market represents acquisition for China. But Winter thinks the recent attacks on the gold price really are the work of speculators rather than central banks. He writes: "There has been some speculation as to who keeps indiscriminately selling gold in the paper market. Central banks are mentioned a lot. However, at these prices, I don't think it serves the interests of the United States to create conditions whereby China grabs thousands of tonnes of cheap gold in lieu of U.S. Treasuries. Nor is it in the U.S. interest to encourage China to make an announcement that the People's Bank of China holds more gold than Fort Knox. It is a little thing called prestige and waving a big stick." Winter's commentary is headlined "China Successfully Hunts Where There Is Gold" and it's posted at his newsletter's Internet site, Winter Actionables, here: http://winteractionables.com/?p=8274 CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc. ADVERTISEMENT You Don't Have to Wait for Your Monetary Metal: All Pro Gold Has Product for Immediate Delivery Many investors lately report having to wait weeks and even months for delivery of their precious metal orders. All Pro Gold works with the largest wholesalers that have inventory "live" -- ready to go. All Pro Gold can ship these "live" gold and silver products as soon as payment funds clear. All Pro Gold can provide immediate delivery of 100-ounce Johnson Matthey silver bars, bags of 90 percent junk silver coins, and 1-ounce silver Austrian Philharmonics. All Pro Gold can deliver silver Canadian maple leafs with a two-day delay and 1-ounce U.S. silver eagles with a 15-day delay. Traditional 1-ounce gold bullion coins and mint-state generic gold double eagles are also available for immediate delivery. All Pro Gold has competitive pricing, and its proprietors, longtime GATA supporters Fred Goldstein and Tim Murphy, are glad to answer any questions or concerns of buyers about the acquisition of precious metals and numismatic coins. Learn more at www.allprogold.com or email info@allprogold.com or telephone All Pro Gold toll-free at 1-855-377-4653. Join GATA here: Vancouver Resource Investment Conference Vancouver Convention Centre West Sunday-Monday, January 19-20, 2014 Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada http://www.cambridgehouse.com/event/vancouver-resource-investment-confer... Mines and Money Hong Kong Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre Monday-Friday, March 24-28, 2014 Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China http://www.minesandmoney.com/hongkong/ * * * Support GATA by purchasing DVDs of our London conference in August 2011 or our Dawson City conference in August 2006: http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html Or by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: http://gata.org/tshirts Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: http://www.gata.org To contribute to GATA, please visit: http://www.gata.org/node/16

The Gold Price Gave Up $6.70 Ending at $1,198.40 Posted: 23 Dec 2013 02:55 PM PST Gold Price Close Today : 1198.40 Change : -6.70 or -0.56% Silver Price Close Today : 19.378 Change : -0.040 or -0.21% Gold Silver Ratio Today : 61.843 Change : -0.218 or -0.35% Silver Gold Ratio Today : 0.01617 Change : 0.000057 or 0.35% Platinum Price Close Today : 1327.40 Change : -4.80 or -0.36% Palladium Price Close Today : 694.75 Change : -3.10 or -0.44% S&P 500 : 1,827.99 Change : 9.67 or 0.53% Dow In GOLD$ : $281.07 Change : $ 2.28 or 0.82% Dow in GOLD oz : 13.597 Change : 0.110 or 0.82% Dow in SILVER oz : 840.88 Change : 3.90 or 0.47% Dow Industrial : 16,294.61 Change : 42.00 or 0.26% US Dollar Index : 80.570 Change : -0.140 or -0.17% The GOLD PRICE gave up $6.70 to end Comex at $1,198.40. Once again, it giveth no signal, telleth no tale. The SILVER PRICE lost 4 cents to 1937.8. Low came at 1926c. this changes nothing on the chart but stays above recent lows and finished the day after the Comex close 4 cents higher. No signals there. Sometime here shortly both silver and GOLD PRICE will make a bottom and make it clear. Meantime, we watch. Interesting is the weakness in the GOLD/SILVER RATIO, which today closed down from Friday's 62.061 to 61.843. That's bullish for silver and gold. Also, I would still swap GOLD for silver at this ratio, targeting a drop to 30:1 and roughly doubling your ounces. Sorry, I'm really rushing today, so this will be short. Nothing much happened anyway, nor will until after Christmas. Stocks made new all time highs (ho-hum). Dow rose 73.47 (0.45%) to 16,294.61. S&P climbed 9.67 (0.53%) to 1,827.99. Higher prices coming. US dollar index still cannot make up its mind whether it wants to rise or fall. Dropped 14 basis points to 80.57 (down 0.17%). Dollar's swoon sent the euro up 0.18% to $1.3698 while the yen stayed flat at 96.09 cents/Y100. On 23 December 1913 the Federal Reserve Act was passed after most of congress had gone home. It created the greatest financial tyranny and tapeworm the world has ever known. Remember that without central banks world wars and socialism would be impossible: taxpayers and bond markets would rebel before they got too far. Argentum et aurum comparenda sunt -- -- Gold and silver must be bought. - Franklin Sanders, The Moneychanger The-MoneyChanger.com © 2013, The Moneychanger. May not be republished in any form, including electronically, without our express permission. To avoid confusion, please remember that the comments above have a very short time horizon. Always invest with the primary trend. Gold's primary trend is up, targeting at least $3,130.00; silver's primary is up targeting 16:1 gold/silver ratio or $195.66; stocks' primary trend is down, targeting Dow under 2,900 and worth only one ounce of gold or 18 ounces of silver. or 18 ounces of silver. US $ and US$-denominated assets, primary trend down; real estate bubble has burst, primary trend down. WARNING AND DISCLAIMER. Be advised and warned: Do NOT use these commentaries to trade futures contracts. I don't intend them for that or write them with that short term trading outlook. I write them for long-term investors in physical metals. Take them as entertainment, but not as a timing service for futures. NOR do I recommend investing in gold or silver Exchange Trade Funds (ETFs). Those are NOT physical metal and I fear one day one or another may go up in smoke. Unless you can breathe smoke, stay away. Call me paranoid, but the surviving rabbit is wary of traps. NOR do I recommend trading futures options or other leveraged paper gold and silver products. These are not for the inexperienced. NOR do I recommend buying gold and silver on margin or with debt. What DO I recommend? Physical gold and silver coins and bars in your own hands. One final warning: NEVER insert a 747 Jumbo Jet up your nose.

The Gold Price Gave Up $6.70 Ending at $1,198.40 Posted: 23 Dec 2013 02:55 PM PST Gold Price Close Today : 1198.40 Change : -6.70 or -0.56% Silver Price Close Today : 19.378 Change : -0.040 or -0.21% Gold Silver Ratio Today : 61.843 Change : -0.218 or -0.35% Silver Gold Ratio Today : 0.01617 Change : 0.000057 or 0.35% Platinum Price Close Today : 1327.40 Change : -4.80 or -0.36% Palladium Price Close Today : 694.75 Change : -3.10 or -0.44% S&P 500 : 1,827.99 Change : 9.67 or 0.53% Dow In GOLD$ : $281.07 Change : $ 2.28 or 0.82% Dow in GOLD oz : 13.597 Change : 0.110 or 0.82% Dow in SILVER oz : 840.88 Change : 3.90 or 0.47% Dow Industrial : 16,294.61 Change : 42.00 or 0.26% US Dollar Index : 80.570 Change : -0.140 or -0.17% The GOLD PRICE gave up $6.70 to end Comex at $1,198.40. Once again, it giveth no signal, telleth no tale. The SILVER PRICE lost 4 cents to 1937.8. Low came at 1926c. this changes nothing on the chart but stays above recent lows and finished the day after the Comex close 4 cents higher. No signals there. Sometime here shortly both silver and GOLD PRICE will make a bottom and make it clear. Meantime, we watch. Interesting is the weakness in the GOLD/SILVER RATIO, which today closed down from Friday's 62.061 to 61.843. That's bullish for silver and gold. Also, I would still swap GOLD for silver at this ratio, targeting a drop to 30:1 and roughly doubling your ounces. Sorry, I'm really rushing today, so this will be short. Nothing much happened anyway, nor will until after Christmas. Stocks made new all time highs (ho-hum). Dow rose 73.47 (0.45%) to 16,294.61. S&P climbed 9.67 (0.53%) to 1,827.99. Higher prices coming. US dollar index still cannot make up its mind whether it wants to rise or fall. Dropped 14 basis points to 80.57 (down 0.17%). Dollar's swoon sent the euro up 0.18% to $1.3698 while the yen stayed flat at 96.09 cents/Y100. On 23 December 1913 the Federal Reserve Act was passed after most of congress had gone home. It created the greatest financial tyranny and tapeworm the world has ever known. Remember that without central banks world wars and socialism would be impossible: taxpayers and bond markets would rebel before they got too far. Argentum et aurum comparenda sunt -- -- Gold and silver must be bought. - Franklin Sanders, The Moneychanger The-MoneyChanger.com © 2013, The Moneychanger. May not be republished in any form, including electronically, without our express permission. To avoid confusion, please remember that the comments above have a very short time horizon. Always invest with the primary trend. Gold's primary trend is up, targeting at least $3,130.00; silver's primary is up targeting 16:1 gold/silver ratio or $195.66; stocks' primary trend is down, targeting Dow under 2,900 and worth only one ounce of gold or 18 ounces of silver. or 18 ounces of silver. US $ and US$-denominated assets, primary trend down; real estate bubble has burst, primary trend down. WARNING AND DISCLAIMER. Be advised and warned: Do NOT use these commentaries to trade futures contracts. I don't intend them for that or write them with that short term trading outlook. I write them for long-term investors in physical metals. Take them as entertainment, but not as a timing service for futures. NOR do I recommend investing in gold or silver Exchange Trade Funds (ETFs). Those are NOT physical metal and I fear one day one or another may go up in smoke. Unless you can breathe smoke, stay away. Call me paranoid, but the surviving rabbit is wary of traps. NOR do I recommend trading futures options or other leveraged paper gold and silver products. These are not for the inexperienced. NOR do I recommend buying gold and silver on margin or with debt. What DO I recommend? Physical gold and silver coins and bars in your own hands. One final warning: NEVER insert a 747 Jumbo Jet up your nose.

GoldCore's O'Byrne: Gold market rigging isn't an outlandish complaint anymore Posted: 23 Dec 2013 02:40 PM PST 5:35p ET Monday, December 23, 2013 Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: In his commentary today for bullion dealer GoldCore, Mark O'Bryne notes that complaints of gold market rigging are gaining credence, as measured by the attention starting to be paid by respectable people in positions of prominence. O'Byrne writes that commentary published last week by Bloomberg News and called to your attention by GATA -- http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-19/how-to-keep-banks-from-rigging-... -- "shows how what was once dismissed as an outlandish 'conspiracy theory'" whose proponents were "laughed at as paranoid tin-foil hat wearers is now not considered quite so outlandish. This is especially the case given that banks have been found to be manipulating and rigging many markets and governments are openly active in currency and especially bond markets today." O'Byrne's commentary is posted at GoldCore here: http://www.goldcore.com/goldcore_blog/bloomberg-how-keep-banks-rigging-g... CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc. ADVERTISEMENT Buy metals at GoldMoney and enjoy international storage GoldMoney was established in 2001 by James and Geoff Turk and is safeguarding more than $1.7 billion in metals and currencies. Buy gold, silver, platinum, and palladium from GoldMoney over the Internet and store them in vaults in Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, ­taking advantage of GoldMoney's low storage rates, among the most competitive in the industry. GoldMoney also offers delivery of 100-gram and 1-kilogram gold bars and 1-kilogram silver bars. To learn more, please visit: http://www.goldmoney.com/?gmrefcode=gata Join GATA here: Vancouver Resource Investment Conference Vancouver Convention Centre West Sunday-Monday, January 19-20, 2014 Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada http://www.cambridgehouse.com/event/vancouver-resource-investment-confer... Mines and Money Hong Kong Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre Monday-Friday, March 24-28, 2014 Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China http://www.minesandmoney.com/hongkong/ * * * Support GATA by purchasing DVDs of our London conference in August 2011 or our Dawson City conference in August 2006: http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html Or by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: http://gata.org/tshirts Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: http://www.gata.org To contribute to GATA, please visit: http://www.gata.org/node/16 ADVERTISEMENT How to profit with silver -- and which stocks to buy now Future Money Trends is offering a special 16-page silver report with our forecast for 2013 that includes profiles of nine companies and technical analysis of their stock performance. Six of the companies have market capitalizations of less than $800 million and one company has a market cap of only $30 million. The most exciting of these companies will begin production in a few weeks and has a market cap of just $150 million. Half of all proceeds from the sale of this report will be donated to the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee to support its efforts exposing manipulation and fraud in the gold and silver markets. To learn about this report, please visit: http://www.futuremoneytrends.com/index.php?option=com_content&id=376&tmp...

The Cure Posted: 23 Dec 2013 02:38 PM PST This is the time of year when people make wishes.  They beseech mankind to end war, eliminate poverty, and cure dangerous diseases.  Almost no one does anything beyond making the wish or writing a check to some charity, but even that little bit makes them feel better.   If I were to make a wish, I would wish for people to re-examine their state indoctrination — or as Ayn Rand used to put it, to check their premises.  War, poverty, and dangerous diseases can be overcome, and the means to their cure is right in front of us, which is why most people don't see it.  Most people think the means to the cure is more and better government programs.  It is not more and better government programs. What is the means?  Freedom. Turn loose the ultimate resource, as Julian Simon termed it.  Let human ingenuity flourish.  Get the state out of our lives.  Get rid of the government bureaucracies that drain our wealth and sap our energy.  Get rid of the income tax, the federal reserve, get rid of the spooks and the growing police state.  We don't need a monopoly enforcer of laws that violates property rights for the alleged purpose of defending property rights.  Repudiate egalitarianism.  The state's imposition of favors means some group is forcibly sacrificed to provide those favors, on net. Human freedom has never flourished under a state because a state by its nature is in the business of abridging that freedom for its own security.  Let the voluntary arrangements of the market be the expression of our release from domination.  Let the voluntary arrangements of the market select the medium we use to facilitate trade, which for centuries has been gold and silver coins. Ron Paul calls for ending the Fed.  I like Ron Paul but we don't need to end the Fed. It will die on its own without the support of the state.  So will every other state-privileged organization.  It took government as we've known it to create the Fed.  Let's end government as we've known it so it can't create a second Fed, as it did with the Bank of the United States.  Ending government as we've known it will put an end to the cartelized aspects of our economy.  No more protection from competitive forces.  Ending government as we've known it will put an end to the institution responsible for initiating war.  Ending the threats to our liberty is a matter of ending the predatory state. Where is the evidence that the market cannot provide for all our needs, when providing for our wants and needs through voluntary exchange is exactly its nature?  Where is the proof that we need coercion to establish a free society?  Let adult humans act like grown-ups and take responsibility for their lives and the lives of their children, and if they choose to do so, responsibility for the lives of others who are incapacitated in some way.  The human spirit is self-interested but it is also highly charitable. Traditional patriotism is allegiance to a state that has worked tirelessly over the years to take control of our lives in myriad ways, usually in the name of some high-sounding but corrupted virtue.  What is virtuous about pledging allegiance to our masters?  We do not want or need masters.  What do Marxists, socialists, Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Greens, and every other interventionist group have in common?  They all seek control of the state's levers of power to force their views on the rest of us.  When we're implored to be patriotic, we're being urged to swear allegiance to those levers.  Allegiance to power is the only constant of our history, not some intransigent set of principles.  Let's remove those levers.  Let's resolve to deal with people voluntarily instead of through state force. The cure to our problems is to eliminate that which prevents us from solving them.  The culprit is the state.  Let's work to end it. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! P.S.  The title of this essay is a dedication to a good friend of mine.

Silver Used in BMW 760 And 3-D Printing Posted: 23 Dec 2013 02:16 PM PST The Silver Institute reports in its latest update to subscribers two interesting new industrial applications of silver: BMW accessories and 3-D printing. BMW Adds Silver Accessories and Trim to 760Li Silver manufacturers Robbe & Berking have teamed with BMW, to produce an even more luxurious version of the carmaker's 760Li (base price: US$160,000). This 2013 model, officially named Individual 760Li Sterling Inspired by Robbe & Berking, offers sterling silver touches on the exterior and interior, including BMW's signature grille and side trim elements. Also made from sterling silver are the tailpipe embellisher, model badging, door handles and the trim strip on the trunk lid. The trim surfaces also include a punch mark of a crescent moon, a traditional symbol for silver. BMW has not yet revealed the price, because it will be determined by the chosen interior and the level of equipment and options desired. The car is not yet available for sale in the United States. 3-D Printers With Nanosilver Can Build Batteries Into Tiny Electronic Products 3-D printing is on the cutting edge of industrial technology, and silver is helping to build products that until recently could only be imagined. Printers that produce 3-Dimensional models – from computer to printer to solid object – have been used to make statues, rocket engines, jewelry and even guns. Now, a Harvard researcher has developed new 'inks' that can be spewed from 3D printers to print batteries and electronic components. Jennifer Lewis, a materials scientist, has developed inks that solidify and become batteries or printed circuit boards. The ultimate end product might be a tiny device, such as a hearing aid or under-the-skin biomedical sensor, that is produced along with its own battery instead of having it inserted later. This battery would not only be smaller than a conventional cell but rechargeable as well. To make the dream a reality, Lewis has not only produced special inks – many with silver nanoparticles that allow electrical conductivity — but also unique nozzles and other extruders that are attached to 3-D printers. Once ejected by the printer, according to a piece of software's design, the inks harden and become wires, batteries and other electronic components. Many nozzles can work simultaneously and produce items in mass batches. One of the benefits of the new inks over existing 2-D printers that shoot metal inks is that the printing is done at room temperature. This allows printing on low-melting materials such as paper, plastic and Styrofoam. Lewis's group has patents for its inks and hopes to license the technology so it can be commercialized for industrial and hobbyist uses. Source: The Silver Institute

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Muddling Through the End of December Delivery Posted: 23 Dec 2013 02:13 PM PST

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