Gold World News Flash |
- ECB Planning a Corporate QE?
- Russian Central Bank Continues Gold Buying Spree
- China’s Plan For $100 Silver, $2,000 Gold & The Oil Market
- Gold & Silver: Wealth of The Rich… And Nations
- MUST READ: JIM WILLIE’S Rebuttals to Jim Rickards’ Recent USA Watchdog Interview Rant
- How To Start A War, And Lose An Empire
- The Gold Price Rose $7.00 Closing at $1,241.00
- The Hedge Fund Industry's 25 Favorite ETFs
- 19 Surprising Facts About The Messed Up State Of The US Economy
- Is China the Next Sub-Prime Event?
- James G. Rickards: In the year 2024
- Kinross to sell halted Ecuador gold project to Lundin company
- Von Greyerz: Swiss gold referendum aims squarely at market manipulation
- How Much Gold is on Loan Worldwide
- In the Year 2024
- Forex-rigging fines against banks could reach $41 billion worldwide, Citi report says
- Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Slowly Higher, More Gold Withdrawals
- Russia Adds A Record 1.2 Mio Ounces Gold To Its Reserves
- Gold Is Extending Its October Run
- How Will We Know That the Gold & Silver Price Bottom Is In?
- Is Gold as Dead as Florida Hurricanes?
- First Swiss Gold Poll Shows Pro-Gold Side In Lead At 45%
- Why We Hold Hard Assets II
- Rate Hikes & Gold
- First Poll In Swiss Gold Referendum Shows Tight Race
- Goldbroker puts French subtitles on GATA secretary's interview with Larry Parks
- Peter Schiff - Ending QE Will Plunge US Into Severe Recession
- Poll finds support for Swiss gold repatriation referendum proposal
- The Crash of 2014: A Special Briefing for All Casey Subscribers
- Gold & Silver Show Mixed Signals While Bitcoin Shows Relative Strength
- Fed Emergency - Fabricated Recovery Is Stalling
- Swiss Gold Vote: Should You Be Worried?
- Stefan Ioannou: Copper, Nickel and Zinc Won't Be Cheap for Long
- Oil Deflation, the Saudi’s Muslim Frankenstein, and the Colder War
| Posted: 22 Oct 2014 01:00 AM PDT from Dan Norcini:
Copper, silver and gold are all higher and even crude oil has firmed. Equities of course love that news. Even the grains are moving higher. More volatility, more uncertainty and more factors for traders/investors to now digest. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Russian Central Bank Continues Gold Buying Spree Posted: 22 Oct 2014 12:30 AM PDT by Lawrence Williams, MineWeb.com
The graph below from Australian gold chart supremo Nick Laird, from www.goldchartsrus.com shows the Russian gold build-up from 2006 and there has been hardly a month since then, as the month-on-month figures show, that the country has not increased its gold reserve. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| China’s Plan For $100 Silver, $2,000 Gold & The Oil Market Posted: 21 Oct 2014 09:01 PM PDT  Today an acclaimed money manager spoke with King World News about China's plan for $100 silver, $2,000 gold, and the oil market. Stephen Leeb also spoke about the big picture for resource wars, fracking, Russia, the United States, and Saudi Arabia.This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Gold & Silver: Wealth of The Rich… And Nations Posted: 21 Oct 2014 08:20 PM PDT from PastorDowell: First published in 1776, The Wealth of Nations is generally regarded as the foundation of contemporary economic thought. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| MUST READ: JIM WILLIE’S Rebuttals to Jim Rickards’ Recent USA Watchdog Interview Rant Posted: 21 Oct 2014 08:02 PM PDT [Ed. Note: We have long argued that Jim Rickards is a gatekeeper and a mouthpiece for the establishment. Case in point: Jim Rickards Exposes Himself as an Establishment Shill Covering Up CIA Involvement in 9/11 Insider Trading -- Calling It "IRRELEVANT."] from Jim Willie, via Perpetual Assets: Some people in our community have wondered exactly whose side Jim Rickards is on. Many have recently argued he is nothing more than a mouthpiece for the globalists. Perhaps we should question anyone who is purporting that an SDR currency could be the solution. That is the solution for the globalist thieves. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Mr. Rickards was interviewed by Greg Hunter recently. The below are comments from our friend Jim Willie, whom we believe to be one of the best sources of information that doesn't work for the parasitic cartel of banking thieves. First we give you the interview here, with commentary and Dr. Willie's rebuttals below The Chinese are hedging against not only the USDollar risk inherent to their vast reserves, but the entire global USD-based financial structure. ◄$$$ RICKARDS ON HUNTER WATCHDOG SHOW SPOUTED ABOUT MANY TOPICS… HE DOES NOT EXPECT CHINA TO BE IN POSITION FOR YUAN TO ACT AS RESERVE CURRENCY… HE EXPECTS THE INTL MONETARY FUND TO BAIL OUT THE CENTRAL BANKS WITH OVER $4 TRILLION IN SDR BASKETS OFF THE PRINTING PRESS… RICKARDS DOES NOT FORESEE THE CHINESE LAYING THE GROUNDWORK FOR A RETURN TO THE GOLD STANDARD (WITH YUAN IN PRIMARY ROLE), AS HE ONLY SEES A USDOLLAR HEDGE. $$$ Jim Rickards is an interesting figure, author of a new book entitled ‘Death of Money‘ that has been well received. He is a culpable system wonk and serves a purpose while appearing as a maverick and friend of gold. The following are his thoughts put to prose, with my rebuttals in bold parentheses. The Islamic State, the emerging caliphate, is not a new concept, but rather an old fixture for centuries, now awakened. The USGovt has been caught off guard (nonsense, the USGovt actively revived it for their destabilization purposes after exiting Iraq, to use the wild card).
Their guerrillas have captured equipment, and been supplied possibly by diverted Saudi arms. A risk of spectacular terror attack exists, including a risk from disruption of oil transport. The United States depends little on Gulf oil supply, but China and Europe depend heavily on the Gulf region for their oil, suddenly at risk. The crude oil market has 3 main factors currently working to provoke a price decline. 1) supply & demand equation slowing down, 2) geopolitical wild card not seen yet, 3) monetary policy giving us deflation. Rickards dislikes the black swan metaphor, and prefers the snowflake and avalanche, which signifies the accumulated risk. The Ebola virus presents a pandemic risk, but still is just a snowflake. It could grow to become a pile of snow, or to become an avalanche. The financial markets can be taken down by unforeseen events. However, the many blunders to date are built into the system, already recognized, having happened, and factored in. Rickards cannot anticipate the timing of calamity, but the magnitude of the collapse can be foreseen. Rickards accuses Russia as having responded asymmetrically with cyber warfare, an example at Nasdaq in 2010. (But Russian virus traces could easily have been planted by Langley software experts. Langley has been improperly painting Iran and China for many years, to take blame for Langley's own extensive work in cyber attacks.) People must realize that securities and assets are not money. People do not know what money is, which is cash or precious metals. If restrictions or market shutdowns occur, then they learn fast what is money and what are stuck assets. Rickards suggests to have 10% in gold & silver, as one asset class. Gold is not digitalized, has no counter-party, has no limitations like cash limits on withdrawal. Notice all the Too Big To Fail banks have even greater concentration of assets than in 2008. It is therefore easier to lock down the few big banks if the goal is to limit withdrawals and access. The non-directional volatility in stock market is evident, big up and down moves on successive days. Rickards is certain of no rate hike by the USFed, as he is more afraid of deflation taking fast root. (Total agreement on ZIRP Forever.) Notice how Buffet bought several hard assets and sits on record level of cash (20%). A calamity is coming as certainty, but when it hits, it will be exponentially larger than any collapse in past. A progression is crystal clear. The 1998 LTCM failure was big, the 2008 Wall Street failure bigger, maybe in 2016-2018 the USFed will be in trouble with other major central banks for the biggest calamity. (USFed has been in deep trouble, near catastrophic trouble since the start of QE bond purchases.) Each crash is bigger, and each bailout bigger than the previous. The central banks are set to fail, but some entity must be ready and have huge potential to bail out the central banks. The Intl Monetary Fund is big enough to bail out central banks, so Rickards believes. (The Jackass believes such a notion is preposterous and delusional, since the IMF is a hollowed out defunct pillar.) The IMF could produce $4 to $5 trillion in SDR basket units in a short period of time. Its offices contain a trading desk. (Huh? The IMF operates on member pledges, and currently is broke. If various high weight nations pledge $trillions, the entire FOREX currency system would quickly collapse, and might force a sudden double or triple in the Gold price, leading to sudden implosion.) All roads lead to hyper-inflation, the clear signal. The USDollar is going to fall versus the SDR basket of currencies, Rickards expects. (Such a notion is again errant, since the USD is the biggest component to the SDR. So the USD cannot fall versus itself in dominant team basket.) The IMF could conduct a rescue based upon a hyper-inflation exercise since it is a faceless edifice that can man the printing press, with offices on 19th Street in Washington DC. (The IMF will be converted into a Chinese tool for its purposes, likely to grease the ramp for a BRICS gold currency launch.) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| How To Start A War, And Lose An Empire Posted: 21 Oct 2014 07:30 PM PDT Submitted by Dmitry Orlov via Club Orlov blog, A year and a half I wrote an essay on how the US chooses to view Russia, titled The Image of the Enemy. I was living in Russia at the time, and, after observing the American anti-Russian rhetoric and the Russian reaction to it, I made some observations that seemed important at the time. It turns out that I managed to spot an important trend, but given the quick pace of developments since then, these observations are now woefully out of date, and so here is an update. At that time the stakes weren't very high yet. There was much noise around a fellow named Magnitsky, a corporate lawyer-crook who got caught and died in pretrial custody. He had been holding items for some bigger Western crooks, who were, of course, never apprehended. The Americans chose to treat this as a human rights violation and responded with the so-called “Magnitsky Act” which sanctioned certain Russian individuals who were labeled as human rights violators. Russian legislators responded with the “Dima Yakovlev Bill,” named after a Russian orphan adopted by Americans who killed him by leaving him in a locked car for nine hours. This bill banned American orphan-killing fiends from adopting any more Russian orphans. It all amounted to a silly bit of melodrama. But what a difference a year and a half has made! Ukraine, which was at that time collapsing at about the same steady pace as it had been ever since its independence two decades ago, is now truly a defunct state, with its economy in free-fall, one region gone and two more in open rebellion, much of the country terrorized by oligarch-funded death squads, and some American-anointed puppets nominally in charge but quaking in their boots about what's coming next. Syria and Iraq, which were then at a low simmer, have since erupted into full-blown war, with large parts of both now under the control of the Islamic Caliphate, which was formed with help from the US, was armed with US-made weapons via the Iraqis. Post-Qaddafi Libya seems to be working on establishing an Islamic Caliphate of its own. Against this backdrop of profound foreign US foreign policy failure, the US recently saw it fit to accuse Russia of having troops “on NATO's doorstep,” as if this had nothing to do with the fact that NATO has expanded east, all the way to Russia's borders. Unsurprisingly, US–Russia relations have now reached a point where the Russians saw it fit to issue a stern warning: further Western attempts at blackmailing them may result in a nuclear confrontation. The American behavior throughout this succession of defeats has been remarkably consistent, with the constant element being their flat refusal to deal with reality in any way, shape or form. Just as before, in Syria the Americans are ever looking for moderate, pro-Western Islamists, who want to do what the Americans want (topple the government of Bashar al Assad) but will stop short of going on to destroy all the infidel invaders they can get their hands on. The fact that such moderate, pro-Western Islamists do not seem to exist does not affect American strategy in the region in any way. Similarly, in Ukraine, the fact that the heavy American investment in “freedom and democracy,” or “open society,” or what have you, has produced a government dominated by fascists and a civil war is, according to the Americans, just some Russian propaganda. Parading under the banner of Hitler's Ukrainian SS division and anointing Nazi collaborators as national heroes is just not convincing enough for them. What do these Nazis have to do to prove that they are Nazis, build some ovens and roast some Jews? Just massacring people by setting fire to a building, as they did in Odessa, or shooting unarmed civilians in the back and tossing them into mass graves, as they did in Donetsk, doesn't seem to work. The fact that many people have refused to be ruled by Nazi thugs and have successfully resisted them has caused the Americans to label them as “pro-Russian separatists.” This, in turn, was used to blame the troubles in Ukraine on Russia, and to impose sanctions on Russia. The sanctions would be reviewed if Russia were to withdraw its troops from Ukraine. Trouble is, there are no Russian troops in Ukraine. Note that this sort of behavior is nothing new. The Americans invaded Afghanistan because the Taleban would not relinquish Osama Bin Laden (who was a CIA operative) unless Americans produced evidence implicating him in 9/11—which did not exist. Americans invaded Iraq because Saddam Hussein would not relinquish his weapons of mass destruction—which did not exist. They invaded Libya because Muammar Qaddafi would not relinquish official positions—which he did not hold. They were ready to invade Syria because Bashar al Assad had used chemical weapons against his own people—which he did not do. And now they imposed sanctions on Russia because Russia had destabilized and invaded Ukraine—which it did not do either. (The US did that.) The sanctions against Russia have an additional sort of unreality to them, because they “boomerang” and hurt the West while giving the Russian government the impetus to do what it wanted to do all along. The sanctions infringed on the rights of a number of Russian businessmen and officials, who promptly yanked their money out of Western banks, pulled their children out of Western schools and universities, and did everything else they could to demonstrate that they are good patriotic Russians, not American lackeys. The sanctions affected a number of Russian energy companies, cutting them off from Western sources of technology and financing, but this will primarily hurt the earnings of Western energy companies while helping their Chinese competitors. There were even some threats to cut Russia off from the SWIFT system, which would have made it quite difficult to transfer funds between Russia and the West, but what these threats did instead was to give Russia the impetus to introduce its own RUSSWIFT system, which will include even Iran, neutralizing future American efforts at imposing financial restrictions. The sanctions were meant to cause economic damage, but Western efforts at inflicting short-term economic damage on Russia are failing. Coupled with a significant drop in the price of oil, all of this was supposed to hurt Russia fiscally, but since the sanctions caused the Ruble to drop in tandem, the net result on Russia's state finances is a wash. Oil prices are lower, but then, thanks in part to the sanctions, so is the Ruble, and since oil revenues are still largely in dollars, this means that Russia's tax receipts are at roughly the same level at before. And since Russian oil companies earn dollars abroad but spend rubles domestically, their production budgets remain unaffected. The Russians also responded by imposing some counter-sanctions, and to take some quick steps to neutralize the effect of the sanctions on them. Russia banned the import of produce from the European Union—to the horror of farmers there. Especially hurt were those EU members who are especially anti-Russian: the Baltic states, which swiftly lost a large fraction of their GDP, along with Poland. An exception is being made for Serbia, which refused to join in the sanctions. Here, the message is simple: friendships that have lasted many centuries matter; what the Americans want is not what the Americans get; and the EU is a mere piece of paper. Thus, the counter-sanctions are driving wedges between the US and the EU, and, within the EU, between Eastern Europe (which the sanctions are hurting the most) and Western Europe, and, most importantly, they drive home the simple message that the US is not Europe's friend. There is something else going on that is going to become more significant in the long run: Russia has taken the hint and is turning away from the West and toward the East. It is parlaying its open defiance of American attempts at world domination into trade relationships throughout the world, much of which is sick and tired of paying tribute to Washington. Russia is playing a key role in putting together an international banking system that circumvents the US dollar and the US Federal Reserve. In these efforts, over half the world's territory and population is squarely on Russia's side and cheering loudly. Thus, the effort to isolate Russia has produced the opposite of the intended result: it is isolating the West from the rest of the world instead. In other ways, the sanctions are actually being helpful. The import ban on foodstuffs from EU is a positive boon to domestic agriculture while driving home a politically important point: don't take food from the hands of those who bite you. Russia is already one of the world's largest grain exporters, and there is no reason why it can't become entirely self-sufficient in food. The impetus to rearm in the face of NATO encroachment on Russian borders (there are now US troops stationed in Estonia, just a short drive from Russia's second-largest city, St. Petersburg) is providing some needed stimulus for industrial redevelopment. This round of military spending is being planned a bit more intelligently than in the Soviet days, with eventual civilian conversion being part of the plan from the very outset. Thus, along with the world's best jet fighters, Russia is likely to start building civilian aircraft for export and competing with Airbus and Boeing. But this is only the beginning. The Russians seem to have finally realized to what extent the playing field has been slanted against them. They have been forced to play by Washington's rules in two key ways: by bending to Washington's will in order to keep their credit ratings high with the three key Western credit rating agencies, in order to secure access to Western credit; and by playing by the Western rule-book when issuing credit of their own, thus keeping domestic interest rates artificially high. The result was that US companies were able to finance their operations more cheaply, artificially making them more competitive. But now, as Russia works quickly to get out from under the US dollar, shifting trade to bilateral currency arrangements (backed by some amount of gold should trade imbalances develop) it is also looking for ways to turn the printing press to its advantage. To date, the dictat handed down from Washington has been: “We can print money all we like, but you can't, or we will destroy you.” But this threat is ringing increasingly hollow, and Russia will no longer be using its dollar revenues to buy up US debt. One proposal currently on the table is to make it impossible to pay for Russian oil exports with anything other than rubles, by establishing two oil brokerages, one in St. Petersburg, the other, seven time zones away, in Vladivostok. Foreign oil buyers would then have to earn their petro-rubles the honest way—through bilateral trade—or, if they can't make enough stuff that the Russians want to import, they could pay for oil with gold (while supplies last). Or the Russians could simply print rubles, and, to make sure such printing does not cause domestic inflation, they could export some inflation by playing with the oil spigot and the oil export tariffs. And if the likes of George Soros decides to attack the ruble in an effort to devalue it, Russia could defend its currency simply by printing fewer rubles for a while—no need to stockpile dollar reserves. So far, this all seems like typical economic warfare: the Americans want to get everything they want by printing money while bombing into submission or sanctioning anyone who disobeys them, while the rest of the world attempts to resist them. But early in 2014 the situation changed. There was a US-instigated coup in Kiev, and instead of rolling over and playing dead like they were supposed to, the Russians mounted a fast and brilliantly successful campaign to regain Crimea, then successfully checkmated the junta in Kiev, preventing it from consolidating control over the remaining former Ukrainian territory by letting volunteers, weapons, equipment and humanitarian aid enter—and hundreds of thousands of refugees exit—through the strictly notional Russian-Ukrainian border, all the while avoiding direct military confrontation with NATO. Seeing all of this happening on the nightly news has awakened the Russian population from its political slumber, making it sit up and pay attention, and sending Putin's approval rating through the roof. The “optics” of all this, as they like to say at the White House, are rather ominous. We are coming up on the 70th anniversary of victory in World War II—a momentous occasion for Russians, who pride themselves on defeating Hitler almost single-handedly. At the same time, the US (Russia's self-appointed arch-enemy) has taken this opportunity to reawaken and feed the monster of Nazism right on Russia's border (inside Russia's borders, some Russians/Ukrainians would say). This, in turn, makes the Russians remember Russia's unique historical mission is among the nations of the world: it is to thwart all other nations' attempts at world domination, be it Napoleonic France or Hitleresque Germany or Obamaniac America. Every century or so some nation forgets its history lessons and attacks Russia. The result is always the same: lots of corpse-studded snowdrifts, and then Russian cavalry galloping into Paris, or Russian tanks rolling into Berlin. Who knows how it will end this time around? Perhaps it will involve polite, well-armed men in green uniforms without insignia patrolling the streets of Brussels and Washington, DC. Only time will tell. You'd think that Obama has already overplayed his hand, and should behave accordingly. His popularity at home is roughly the inverse of Putin's, which is to say, Obama is still more popular than Ebola, but not by much. He can't get anything at all done, no matter how pointless or futile, and his efforts to date, at home and abroad, have been pretty much a disaster. So what does this social worker turned national mascot decide to do? Well, the way the Russians see it, he has decided to declare war on Russia! In case you missed it, look up his speech before the UN General Assembly. It's up on the White House web site. He placed Russia directly between Ebola and ISIS among the three topmost threats facing the world. Through Russian eyes his speech reads as a declaration of war. It's a new, mixed-mode sort of war. It's not a total war to the death, although the US is being rather incautious by the old Cold War standards in avoiding a nuclear confrontation. It's an information war—based on lies and unjust vilification; it's a financial and economic war—using sanctions; it's a political war—featuring violent overthrow of elected governments and support for hostile regimes on Russia's borders; and it's a military war—using ineffectual but nevertheless insulting moves such as stationing a handful of US troops in Estonia. And the goals of this war are clear: it is to undermine Russia economically, destroy it politically, dismember it geographically, and turn it into a pliant vassal state that furnishes natural resources to the West practically free of charge (with a few hand-outs to a handful of Russian oligarchs and criminal thugs who play ball). But it doesn't look like any of that is going to happen because, you see, a lot of Russians actually get all that, and will choose leaders who will not win any popularity contests in the West but who will lead them to victory. Given the realization that the US and Russia are, like it or not, in a state of war, no matter how opaque or muddled, people in Russia are trying to understand why this is and what it means. Obviously, the US has seen Russia as the enemy since about the time of the Revolution of 1917, if not earlier. For example, it is known that after the end of World War II America's military planners were thinking of launching a nuclear strike against the USSR, and the only thing that held them back was the fact that they didn't have enough bombs, meaning that Russia would have taken over all of Europe before the effects of the nuclear strikes could have deterred them from doing so (Russia had no nuclear weapons at the time, but lots of conventional forces right in the heart of Europe). But why has war been declared now, and why was it declared by this social worker turned national misleader? Some keen observers mentioned his slogan “the audacity of hope,” and ventured to guess that this sort of “audaciousness” (which in Russian sounds a lot like “folly”) might be a key part of his character which makes him want to be the leader of the universe, like Napoleon or Hitler. Others looked up the campaign gibberish from his first presidential election (which got silly young Americans so fired up) and discovered that he had nice things to say about various cold warriors. Do you think Obama might perhaps be a scholar of history and a shrewd geopolitician in his own right? (That question usually gets a laugh, because most people know that he is just a chucklehead and repeats whatever his advisers tell him to say.) Hugo Chavez once called him “a hostage in the White House,” and he wasn't too far off. So, why are his advisers so eager to go to war with Russia, right now, this year? Is it because the US is collapsing more rapidly than most people can imagine? This line of reasoning goes like this: the American scheme of world domination through military aggression and unlimited money-printing is failing before our eyes. The public has no interest in any more “boots on the ground,” bombing campaigns do nothing to reign in militants that Americans themselves helped organize and equip, dollar hegemony is slipping away with each passing day, and the Federal Reserve is fresh out of magic bullets and faces a choice between crashing the stock market and crashing the bond market. In order to stop, or at least forestall this downward slide into financial/economic/political oblivion, the US must move quickly to undermine every competing economy in the world through whatever means it has left at its disposal, be it a bombing campaign, a revolution or a pandemic (although this last one can be a bit hard to keep under control). Russia is an obvious target, because it is the only country in the world that has had the gumption to actually show international leadership in confronting the US and wrestling it down; therefore, Russia must be punished first, to keep the others in line. I don't disagree with this line of reasoning, but I do want to add something to it. First, the American offensive against Russia, along with most of the rest of the world, is about things Americans like to call “facts on the ground,” and these take time to create. The world wasn't made in a day, and it can't be destroyed in a day (unless you use nuclear weapons, but then there is no winning strategy for anyone, the US included). But the entire financial house of cards can be destroyed rather quickly, and here Russia can achieve a lot while risking little. Financially, Russia's position is so solid that even the three Western credit ratings agencies don't have the gall to downgrade Russia's rating, sanctions notwithstanding. This is a country that is aggressively paying down its foreign debt, is running a record-high budget surplus, has a positive balance of payments, is piling up physical gold reserves, and not a month goes by that it doesn't sign a major international trade deal (that circumvents the US dollar). In comparison, the US is a dead man walking: unless it can continue rolling over trillions of dollars in short-term debt every month at record-low interest rates, it won't be able to pay the interest on its debt or its bills. Good-bye, welfare state, hello riots. Good-bye military contractors and federal law enforcement, hello mayhem and open borders. Now, changing “facts on the ground” requires physical actions, whereas causing a financial stampede to the exits just requires somebody to yell “Boo!” loudly and frighteningly enough. Second, it must be understood that at this point the American ruling elite is almost entirely senile. The older ones seem actually senile in the medical sense. Take Leon Panetta, the former Defense Secretary: he's been out flogging his new book, and he is still blaming Syria's Bashar al Assad for gassing his own people! By now everybody else knows that that was a false flag attack, carried out by some clueless Syrian rebels with Saudi help, to | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The Gold Price Rose $7.00 Closing at $1,241.00 Posted: 21 Oct 2014 07:23 PM PDT
Aurum et argentum comparenda sunt -- -- Gold and silver must be bought. - Franklin Sanders, The Moneychanger The-MoneyChanger.com © 2014, 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 Hedge Fund Industry's 25 Favorite ETFs Posted: 21 Oct 2014 07:15 PM PDT Exchange Traded Funds are becoming an important market for hedge funds as BofAML notes, they have shifted their profiles from shorting single stocks to more actively using ETFs as a hedge. On aggregate, BofAML reports that hedge funds owned $36.9bn worth of ETFs at the beginning of 3Q 2014, up notably from $33.8bn in the previous quarter, and these are the top 25 by market value. Notably, hedge funds bought Agricultural business (MOO) along with Emerging Markets (EEM, VWO), while selling gold (GDX and GLD) and Italy index (EWI).
Our universe consists of 758 ETFs listed in the US with market caps of at least $100mn as of June 30, 2014. Source: BofAML | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 19 Surprising Facts About The Messed Up State Of The US Economy Posted: 21 Oct 2014 05:31 PM PDT Submitted by Michael Snyder of The Economic Collapse blog, Barack Obama and the Federal Reserve are lying to you. The "economic recovery" that we all keep hearing about is mostly just a mirage. The percentage of Americans that are employed has barely budged since the depths of the last recession, the labor force participation rate is at a 36 year low, the overall rate of homeownership is the lowest that it has been in nearly 20 years and approximately 49 percent of all Americans are financially dependent on the government at this point. In a recent article, I shared 12 charts that clearly demonstrate the permanent damage that has been done to our economy over the last decade. The response to that article was very strong. Many people were quite upset to learn that they were not being told the truth by our politicians and by the mainstream media. Sadly, the vast majority of Americans still have absolutely no idea what is being done to our economy. For those out there that still believe that we are doing "just fine", here are 19 more facts about the messed up state of the U.S. economy... #1 After accounting for inflation, median household income in the United States is 8 percent lower than it was when the last recession started in 2007. #2 The number of part-time workers in America has increased by 54 percent since the last recession began in December 2007. Meanwhile, the number of full-time jobs has dropped by more than a million over that same time period. #3 More than 7 million Americans that are currently working part-time jobs would actually like to have full-time jobs. #4 The jobs gained during this "recovery" pay an average of 23 percent less than the jobs that were lost during the last recession. #5 The number of unemployed workers that have completely given up looking for work is twice as high now as it was when the last recession began in December 2007. #6 When the last recession began, about 17 percent of all unemployed workers had been out of work for six months or longer. Today, that number sits at just above 34 percent. #7 Due to a lack of decent jobs, half of all college graduates are still relying on their parents financially when they are two years out of school. #8 According to a new method of calculating poverty devised by the U.S. Census Bureau, the state of California currently has a poverty rate of 23.4 percent. #9 According to the New York Times, the "typical American household" is now worth 36 percent less than it was worth a decade ago. #10 In 2007, the average household in the top 5 percent had 16.5 times as much wealth as the average household overall. But now the average household in the top 5 percent has 24 times as much wealth as the average household overall. #11 In an absolutely stunning development, the rate of small business ownership in the United States has plunged to an all-time low. #12 Subprime loans now make up 31 percent of all auto loans in America. Didn't that end up really badly when the housing industry tried the same thing? #13 The average cost of producing a barrel of shale oil in the United States is approximately 85 dollars. Now that the price of oil is starting to slip under that number, the "shale boom" in America could turn into a bust very rapidly. #14 On a purchasing power basis, China now actually has a larger economy than the United States does. #15 It is hard to believe, but there are 49 million people that are dealing with food insecurity in America today. #16 There are six banks in the United States that pretty much everyone agrees fit into the "too big to fail" category. Five of them have more than 40 trillion dollars of exposure to derivatives. #17 The 113 top earning employees at the Federal Reserve headquarters in Washington D.C. make an average of $246,506 a year. It turns out that ruining the U.S. economy is a very lucrative profession. #18 We are told that the federal deficit is under control, but the truth is that the U.S. national debt increased by more than a trillion dollars during fiscal year 2014. #19 An astounding 40 million dollars has been spent just on vacations for Barack Obama and his family. Perhaps he figures that if we are going down as a nation anyway, he might as well enjoy the ride. If our economy truly was "recovering", there would be lots of good paying middle class jobs available. But that is not the case at all. I know so many people in their prime working years that spend day after day searching for a job. Most of them never seem to get anywhere. It isn't because they don't have anything to offer. It is just that the labor market is absolutely saturated with qualified job seekers. For example, USA Today recently shared the story of 42-year-old Alex Gomez...
Does Alex Gomez have gifts and abilities to share with our society? Of course he does. So why can't he find a job? It is because we have a broken economy. We are in the midst of a long-term economic decline and the system simply does not work properly anymore. And thanks to decades of very foolish decisions, this is only the start of our problems. Things are only going to get worse from here. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Is China the Next Sub-Prime Event? Posted: 21 Oct 2014 05:18 PM PDT By: Brad Thomas at http://capitalistexploits.at/ As mentioned in my writing on the Singapore dollar, the most dangerous thing in finance is the "thing" that never moves. This stability creates an illusion of control around which many positions are built, the greater the perceived stability the greater the positions, and the more other assumptions and forecasts are made. The stability (or lack of volatility) in the Renminbi has been the one of the foundations that has made so many other variables more forecastable. No one can imagine the Renminbi being a highly volatile currency, let alone coming remotely close to repeating what happened during the Asian Tiger crisis of 1997! If this foundation of stability suddenly disappears then there will be a great increase in uncertainty and volatility in many markets across the globe. I don't know exactly how a breakdown in the Renminbi will play out. However, it is a sure bet that all those markets that prospered over the last 15 years or so on the back of a China will do badly. Where things become shady is the collateral damage to other markets that have had nothing to do with the Chinese economic miracle. I think a reasonable bearish position on the Renminbi will be a great way to hedge out the uncertainty of outcomes with respect to how the Chinese economic miracle "unwinds". For a long time I have been highly skeptical on the Chinese "economic miracle". Every contrarian bone in my body has been telling me that there is something not quite right with China's meteoric rise from an economy that was seemingly insignificant some 15 years ago to the economic powerhouse that we are led to believe it is today. The Chinese economy has risen to prominence too quickly too soon. What has been the driver of this rise? Why did commodity prices explode skywards in 2002 having gone nowhere for the previous 30 years? I find it hard to believe that commodities became scarcer all of a sudden!
The CRB Commodity Index (the CCI) Well, no one has been able to give me a straight down the line answer - at least one that an ordinary average trader like myself could understand. That is until I came across the following discussion with Mark Hart. Hart came to prominence together with Kyle Bass after shorting the "sub-prime thing" in 2007. Hart's discussion on China starts at about the 55 minute mark. Note what Hart says about how he is applying his view on China (via options on the Renminbi). The interview was conducted in September but note that he has been "bearish" on China at least since 2011! For more on the issues facing China you might like to read the writings of Gordon Chang and Michael Pettis. I think both present very objective views on China. I am not going to pretend to offer anything more than what these gentlemen offer with respect to the view on China. Hart talks about buying "puts" on the Renminbi. What makes the trade so attractive is the extreme low level of volatility. Below is an index of implied volatility for 12 months to expiry at the money (ATM) calls on the USD/CNY.
So we can buy calls on the USD/Renminbi for about 2.5% volatility. For comparison purposes - implied volatility on the AUD/USD is about 10%! Hart talks about buying the CNY 7 strike call on the USD/Renminbi. To give you an idea of the leverage offered on a 12-month option at the CNY 7 strike – about $1,100 will get you a notional position of $1,000,000! To achieve a payoff of 10x all the USD/CNY would have to close at is 7.07, and at 7.15 a 20x payoff is achieved! One can now appreciate what Mark Hart is on about - the gearing offered by options on the Renminbi is huge because volatility is grossly underpriced. Is it so crazy to think that the Renminbi can get to a "tick or two" above 7 within 12 months?
Well, let's not forget what happened to currencies in the past. Note what happened to the Mexican Peso during the "Tequila" crisis:
...the Thai baht during the Asian Tiger crisis:
...or to the Russian Ruble during the LTCM crisis:
Currencies can move and they move significantly when they have been sailing in calm waters for extended periods of time - just like the Chinese Renminbi now. Position for the unexpected. It is why Hart and Bass made so much money during the Subprime crisis. - Brad
"Never think that lack of variability is stability. Don't confuse lack of volatility with stability, ever." - Nassim Nicholas Taleb | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| James G. Rickards: In the year 2024 Posted: 21 Oct 2014 05:08 PM PDT 7:06p CT Tuesday, October 21, 2014 Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: Writing for The Daily Reckoning, fund manager, author, and geopolitical strategist James G. Rickards imagines life in the year 2024 as being under the totalitarian control of a world central bank that has outlawed not only gold but also markets and money itself. While Rickards' nightmare scenario is the perfectly logical consequence of the trend of central banking, we still have a few years to push the world toward a different future. Rickards' essay is headlined "In the Year 2024" and it's posted at The Daily Reckoning here: http://dailyreckoning.com/a-glimpse-into-the-year-2024/ CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer ADVERTISEMENT Free Storage with BullionStar in Singapore Until 2016 BullionStar is a Singapore-registered company with a one-stop bullion shop, showroom, and vault at 45 New Bridge Road in Singapore. BullionStar's solution for storing bullion in Singapore is called My Vault Storage. With My Vault Storage you can store bullion in BullionStar's bullion vault, which is integrated with BullionStar's shop and showroom, making it a convenient one-stop-shop for precious metals in Singapore. Customers can buy, store, sell, or request physical withdrawal of their bullion through My Vault Storage® online around the clock. Storage is FREE until 2016 and will have the most competitive rates in the industry thereafter. For more information, please visit Bullion Star here: Join GATA here: New Orleans Investment Conference https://jeffersoncompanies.com/landing/noic2014?IDPromotion=614011014520... Mines and Money London http://www.minesandmoney.com/london/ * * * Support GATA by purchasing DVDs of our London conference in August 2011 or our Dawson City conference in August 2006: http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html Or by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: To contribute to GATA, please visit: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Kinross to sell halted Ecuador gold project to Lundin company Posted: 21 Oct 2014 04:51 PM PDT By Nicole Mordant Kinross Gold Corp has agreed to sell its halted Fruta del Norte gold project in Ecuador to a company belonging to the Swedish-Canadian Lundin family for $240 million, Kinross and the company, Fortress Minerals Corp., said today. Toronto-based Kinross acquired the project in 2008 with its $1.2 billion friendly takeover of Aurelian Resources, and once called it "one of the most exciting gold discoveries of the past 15 years." But last year it suspended work on the gold project, Ecuador's largest, saying the government had refused to compromise over a 70 percent windfall tax. Last June Kinross took a $720 million charge on the project and has been looking to sell it. The government of Ecuador has indicated its support for the transaction, Kinross said. ... ... For the remainder of the report: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/21/kinross-fortress-ecuador-idUSL... ADVERTISEMENT Own Allocated -- and Most Importantly -- Zurich, Switzerland, remains an extremely safe location for storing coins and bars of the monetary metals. If you do not own segregated physical coins and bars that you can visit, inspect, and take delivery of, you are vulnerable. International diversification remains vital to investors. GoldCore can accomplish this for you. Read GoldCore's "Essential Guide to Gold Storage In Switzerland" here: http://info.goldcore.com/essential-guide-to-storing-gold-in-switzerland Email the GoldCore team at info@goldcore.com or call our trading desk: UK: +44 (0)203 086 9200 -- U.S.: +1-302-635-1160 -- International: +353 (0)1 632 5010 Join GATA here: New Orleans Investment Conference https://jeffersoncompanies.com/landing/noic2014?IDPromotion=614011014520... Mines and Money London http://www.minesandmoney.com/london/ * * * Support GATA by purchasing DVDs of our London conference in August 2011 or our Dawson City conference in August 2006: http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html Or by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: To contribute to GATA, please visit: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Von Greyerz: Swiss gold referendum aims squarely at market manipulation Posted: 21 Oct 2014 04:26 PM PDT 6:24p CT Tuesday, October 21, 2014 Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: Swiss gold fund manager Egon von Greyerz today comments to King World News about the opinion poll showing strong support for the Swiss gold repatriation referendum proposal. Von Greyerz says: "The yes campaign starts this Thursday with a press conference. This is when it will put forward its arguments for this initiative. The Swiss government is against this initiative, as all governments are, because it takes away the government's ability to manipulate the currency and gold markets. Switzerland sold 50 percent of its gold at the bottom of the market between 2000 and 2005. This has already cost the Swiss government 29 billion Swiss francs." Von Greyerz's interview is excerpted at the KWN blog here: http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2014/10/21_T... CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer ADVERTISEMENT Direct Ownership and Storage of Precious Metals Goldbroker.com is a precious metals investment company that enables investors to own and store gold directly in their own name (no mutualized ownership) in Zurich and Singapore. Goldbroker's clients are not exposed to any counterparty risks. They own gold and silver in their own names (the ownership certificate cites the name of the investor and serial number of his bars) and they have storage accounts opened in their own name as well. So Goldbroker.com's storage partner knows the exact identity of each investor. Goldbroker.com doesn't store in the name of its clients; rather, Goldbroker's clients store personally. All investors have direct access to their gold and silver bars. Goldbroker.com was launched in 2011 so that investors would avoid any counterparty risk when investing in physical gold and silver. Goldbroker.com is listed among GATA's recommended monetary metals dealers. (http://www.gata.org/node/173) To invest or learn more, please visit: Join GATA here: New Orleans Investment Conference https://jeffersoncompanies.com/landing/noic2014?IDPromotion=614011014520... Mines and Money London http://www.minesandmoney.com/london/ * * * Support GATA by purchasing DVDs of our London conference in August 2011 or our Dawson City conference in August 2006: http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html Or by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: To contribute to GATA, please visit: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| How Much Gold is on Loan Worldwide Posted: 21 Oct 2014 04:00 PM PDT GoldBroker | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 21 Oct 2014 02:01 PM PDT [Editor's Note from Jim Rickards: The following article describes a fictional dystopia in the spirit of Brave New World or 1984. It is not a firm forecast or prediction in the usual analytic sense. Instead, it's intended to provide warning, and encourage readers to be alert to dangerous trends in society, some of which are already in place. Thank you.] As I awoke this morning, Sunday, Oct. 13, 2024, from restless dreams, I found the insect-sized sensor implanted in my arm was already awake. We call it a "bug." U.S. citizens have been required to have them since 2022 to access government health care. The bug knew from its biometric monitoring of my brain wave frequencies and rapid eye movement that I would awake momentarily. It was already at work launching systems, including the coffee maker. I could smell the coffee brewing in the kitchen. The information screens on the inside of my panopticon goggles were already flashing before my eyes. Images of world leaders were on the screen. They were issuing proclamations about the fine health of their economies and the advent of world peace. Citizens, they explained, needed to work in accordance with the New World Order Growth Plan to maximize wealth for all. I knew this was propaganda, but I couldn't ignore it. Removing your panopticon goggles is viewed with suspicion by the neighborhood watch committees. Your "bug" controls all the channels. I'm mostly interested in economics and finance, as I have been for decades. I've told the central authorities that I'm an economic historian, so they've given me access to archives and information denied to most citizens in the name of national economic security. My work now is only historical, because markets were abolished after the Panic of 2018. That was not the original intent of the authorities. They meant to close markets "temporarily" to stop the panic, but once the markets were shut, there was no way to reopen them without the panic starting again. My work now is only historical, because markets were abolished after the Panic of 2018. Today, trust in markets is completely gone. All investors want is their money back. Authorities started printing money after the Panic of 2008, but that solution stopped working by 2018. Probably because so much had been printed in 2017 under QE7. When the panic hit, money was viewed as worthless. So markets were simply closed. Between 2018–20, the Group of 20 major powers, the G-20, abolished all currencies except for the dollar, the euro and the ruasia. The dollar became the local currency in North and South America. Europe, Africa and Australia used the euro. The ruasia was the only new currency — a combination of the old Russian ruble, Chinese yuan and Japanese yen — and was adopted as the local currency in Asia. There is also new world money called special drawing rights, or SDRs for short. They're used only for settlements between countries, however. Everyday citizens use the dollar, euro or ruasia for daily transactions. The SDR is also used to set energy prices and as a benchmark for the value of the three local currencies. The World Central Bank, formerly the IMF, administers the SDR system under the direction of the G-20. As a result of the fixed exchange rates, there's no currency trading. All of the gold in the world was confiscated in 2020 and placed in a nuclear bomb-proof vault dug into the Swiss Alps. The mountain vault had been vacated by the Swiss army and made available to the World Central Bank for this purpose. All G-20 nations contributed their national gold to the vault. All private gold was forcibly confiscated and added to the Swiss vault as well. All gold mining had been nationalized and suspended on environmental grounds. The purpose of the Swiss vault was not to have gold backing for currencies, but rather to remove gold from the financial system entirely so it could never be used as money again. Thus, gold trading ceased because its production, use and possession were banned. By these means, the G-20 and the World Central Bank control the only forms of money. Some lucky ones had purchased gold in 2014 and sold it when it reached $40,000 per ounce in 2019. By then, inflation was out of control and the power elites knew that all confidence in paper currencies had been lost. The only way to re-establish control of money was to confiscate gold. But those who sold near the top were able to purchase land or art, which the authorities did not confiscate. Those who never owned gold in the first place saw their savings, retirement incomes, pensions and insurance policies turn to dust once the hyperinflation began. Now it seems so obvious. The only way to preserve wealth through the Panic of 2018 was to have gold, land and fine art. But investors not only needed to have the foresight to buy it… they also had to be nimble enough to sell the gold before the confiscation in 2020, and then buy more land and art and hang onto it. For that reason, many lost everything. Land and personal property were not confiscated, because much of it was needed for living arrangements and agriculture. Personal property was too difficult to confiscate and of little use to the state. Fine art was lumped in with cheap art and mundane personal property and ignored. Stock and bond trading were halted when the markets closed. During the panic selling after the crash of 2018, stocks were wiped out. Too, the value of all bonds were wiped out in the hyperinflation of 2019. Governments closed stock and bond markets, nationalized all corporations and declared a moratorium on all debts. World leaders initially explained it as an effort to "buy time" to come up with a plan to unfreeze the markets, but over time, they realized that trust and confidence had been permanently destroyed, and there was no point in trying. Wiped-out savers broke out in money riots soon after but were quickly suppressed by militarized police who used drones, night vision technology, body armor and electronic surveillance. Highway tollbooth digital scanners were used to spot and interdict those who tried to flee by car. By 2017, the U.S. government required sensors on all cars. It was all too easy for officials to turn off the engines of those who were government targets, spot their locations and arrest them on the side of the road. In compensation for citizens' wealth destroyed by inflation and confiscation, governments distributed digital Social Units called Social Shares and Social Donations. These were based on a person's previous wealth. Americans below a certain level of wealth got Social Shares that entitled them to a guaranteed income. Those above a certain level of wealth got Social Donation units that required them to give their wealth to the state. Over time, the result was a redistribution of wealth so that everyone had about the same net worth and the same standard of living. The French economist Thomas Piketty was the principal consultant to the G-20 and World Central Bank on this project. By 2017, the U.S. government required sensors on all cars. To facilitate the gradual freezing of markets, confiscation of wealth and creation of Social Units, world governments coordinated the elimination of cash in 2016. The "cashless society" was sold to citizens as a convenience. No more dirty, grubby coins and bills to carry around! Instead, you could pay with smart cards and mobile phones and could transfer funds online. Only when the elimination of cash was complete did citizens realize that digital money meant total control by government. This made it easy to adopt former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers' idea of negative interest rates. Governments simply deducted amounts from its citizens' bank accounts every month. Without cash, there was no way to prevent the digital deductions. The government could also monitor all of your transactions and digitally freeze your account if you disagreed with their tax or monetary policy. In fact, a new category of hate crime for "thoughts against monetary policy" was enacted by executive order. The penalty was digital elimination of the wealth of those guilty of dissent. The entire process unfolded in small stages so that investors and citizens barely noticed before it was too late. Gold had been the best way to preserve wealth from 2014–18, but in the end, it was confiscated because the power elites knew it could not be allowed. First, they eliminated cash in 2016. Then they eliminated diverse currencies and stocks in 2018. Finally came the hyperinflation of 2019, which wiped out most wealth, followed by gold confiscation and the digital socialism of 2020. By last year, 2023, free markets, private property and entrepreneurship were things of the past. All that remains of wealth is land, fine art and some (illegal) gold. The only other valuable assets are individual talents, provided you can deploy them outside the system of state-approved jobs. Regards, Jim Rickards P.S. Sign up to receive the Daily Reckoning email edition for free. It’s now the official way to stay up to date on Jim’s new writings and any developments in his newsletter, Strategic Intelligence. Sign up for FREE, right here. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Forex-rigging fines against banks could reach $41 billion worldwide, Citi report says Posted: 21 Oct 2014 01:37 PM PDT By Richard Partington http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-20/forex-rigging-fines-could-hit-4... LONDON -- Probes into allegations that traders rigged foreign-exchange benchmarks could cost banks as much as $41 billion to settle, Citigroup Inc. analysts said. Deutsche Bank is seen as probably the "most impacted" with a fine of as much as 5.1 billion euros ($6.5 billion), Citigroup analysts led by Kinner Lakhani said yesterday, estimating that the Frankfurt-based bank's settlements could reach 10 percent of its tangible book value, or its assets' worth. Using similar calculations, Barclays could face as much as 3 billion pounds ($4.8 billion) in fines and UBS penalties of 4.3 billion Swiss francs ($4.6 billion), they wrote in a note first sent to clients on Oct. 3. ... Dispatch continues below ... ADVERTISEMENT Silver mining stock report comes with 1-ounce silver round Future Money Trends is offering a special 18-page silver mining stock report about how to profit with the monetary and industrial metal in 2014, and it comes with a free 1-ounce silver round. Proceeds from the report's sales are shared with the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee to support its efforts to expose manipulation in the monetary metals markets. To learn about this report, please visit: "Extrapolating European and, more importantly, U.S. penalties from a previous global settlement suggests to us a total potential global settlement on this key issue," they said in the note. Authorities around the world are scrutinizing allegations that dealers traded ahead of their clients and colluded to rig currency benchmarks. Regulators in the U.K. and U.S. could reach settlements with some banks as soon as next month, and prosecutors at the U.S. Justice Department plan to charge one by the end of the year, people with knowledge of the matter have said. Spokesmen for Deutsche Bank, Barclays and UBS declined to comment on the Citigroup estimates. The Citigroup analysts made their calculations using a Sept. 26 Reuters report that the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority settlements could include fines totaling about 1.8 billion pounds. They derived their estimates for how high fines could go in other investigations from that baseline, using banks' settlements in the London interbank offered rate manipulation cases as a guide. "The discussion around a potential U.K. settlement as well as certain U.S. banks taking related provisions in their recent results suggests a kick-start toward overall FX litigation settlement," Lakhani said by e-mail. Citigroup is the biggest player in the $5.3 trillion-a-day foreign-exchange market, according to a Euromoney Institutional Investor Plc survey published May 9. The New York-based bank's 16.04 percent market share topped Deutsche Bank's 15.67 percent and Barclays's 10.91 percent. UBS controlled 10.88 percent. Citigroup's potential fine in the currency manipulation investigations wasn't mentioned in the analysts' report, in line with bank policy. The firm is among those in talks with regulators in the U.S. and U.K. to settle probes, people with knowledge of the matter have said. The Euromoney rankings are drawn from a survey of traders in the foreign-exchange markets. The 2013 results were based on 14,050 responses, representing $225 trillion of turnover, London-based Euromoney said. U.K. authorities will probably account for about $6.7 billion of fines across all banks, according to the Citigroup analysts. Other European investigations will account for $6.5 billion. Penalties in the U.S. cases could be about four times greater, hitting $28.2 billion. The Citigroup analysts didn't take into account the possible effect of banks' collaboration with investigators. That can have a big impact on the size of the fines, lowering and even wiping out a penalty in some cases. UBS and Barclays saw $4.3 billion worth of antitrust fines waived by European Union authorities in December in exchange for their early and full cooperation. Six others were fined 1.7 billion euros in that case, which involved rigging euro and yen interest rate derivatives. UBS has sought leniency in exchange for handing over evidence of misconduct to U.S. antitrust investigators in the foreign-exchange probes, and was the first to step forward to cooperate with the EU, people with knowledge of the matter have said. Join GATA here: New Orleans Investment Conference https://jeffersoncompanies.com/landing/noic2014?IDPromotion=614011014520... Mines and Money London http://www.minesandmoney.com/london/ * * * Support GATA by purchasing DVDs of our London conference in August 2011 or our Dawson City conference in August 2006: http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html Or by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: To contribute to GATA, please visit: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Slowly Higher, More Gold Withdrawals Posted: 21 Oct 2014 01:19 PM PDT | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Russia Adds A Record 1.2 Mio Ounces Gold To Its Reserves Posted: 21 Oct 2014 12:57 PM PDT As evidenced by the Russian central bank, it appears that Russia has added another 1,200,000 ounces of physical gold to their reserves. Total Russian gold reserves now stand at 37,000,000 ounces, or 1049 tonnes. The following chart, courtesy Sharelynx, shows the increase of Russian gold reserves over the last 8 years. The latter part of the chart shows the monthly change. It is very interesting to note how September 2014 attributed to the biggest month-on-month increase ever. Only in May 2010 was there an increase which came close to the one of last month with an addition of 1.1 million ounces. As we said in March of this year in our article Russia Touches U.S. Achilles Heel: Petrogold instead of Petrodollar, we believe gold equals strength. It is no coincidence that the petrodollar system is losing ground and that countries like Russia and China keep on hoarding large amounts of gold. This trend could end up in a lost of trust in the US dollar leading the world reserve to collapse. That is the also unspoken Achilles heel of the US.
Ed Steer notes in his daily newsletter that the 1.2 million troy ounces is considerably more gold than Russia digs out of the ground in one month. “I get the impression from this big deposit in September that they have gold stashed away somewhere that doesn’t show up in the books of the central bank, as a deposit that size can’t be explained any other way.” | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Gold Is Extending Its October Run Posted: 21 Oct 2014 12:07 PM PDT This is an excerpt from the daily StockCharts.com newsletter to premium subscribers, which offers daily a detailed market analysis (recommended service).
The correction in the Dollar helped gold as the Gold SPDR GLD advanced over 5% from its early October low. The first chart shows GLD breaking the August trend line and moving back above the support break. In an interesting twist, gold is ignoring weakness in the Euro today and moving higher. While I am not sure if this will last, I would mark first support at 118 and stay positive on gold as long as this level holds. All bets are off if the Dollar breaks out to the upside.
The second chart shows the Gold Miners ETF GDX forming a pennant within a downtrend. Pennants are typically continuation patterns and a break below 20.5 would signal a continuation lower. However, gold is on the rise this month and GDX did form a harami on Friday-Monday. A move above 22 would break pennant resistance and be bullish.
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| How Will We Know That the Gold & Silver Price Bottom Is In? Posted: 21 Oct 2014 11:55 AM PDT Briefly: In our opinion speculative long positions (half) in gold, silver and mining stocks are justified from the risk/reward perspective. Yesterday, gold closed higher than it did in the previous several weeks, which seems like a very bullish development for the entire precious metals market until one realizes that miners are still close to their most recent lows. In short, in our opinion, the answer to the title question is that miners could rally some more in the short term, but we don’t expect the rally to be significant. We expect to see significant rallies after the final bottom is reached (in a few weeks – months), but not before that – at least not based on the information that we have available today. Furthermore, it seems that the next local top will be reached shortly, but that it’s not in just yet. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Is Gold as Dead as Florida Hurricanes? Posted: 21 Oct 2014 11:36 AM PDT It’s been over 3,280 days since a hurricane hit Florida. As hurricane season comes to a close next month, only Mother Nature knows how long the streak will last. Like many Floridians, my wife and I stayed home and rode out a hurricaneâ€"once! We’d built a home on Perdido Key, a barrier island west of Pensacola. It was engineered to withstand 150-plus mph winds, and it was a beautiful home with a master bedroom spanning the entire third floor, looking out across the Gulf of Mexico. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| First Swiss Gold Poll Shows Pro-Gold Side In Lead At 45% Posted: 21 Oct 2014 11:15 AM PDT The first poll of how the Swiss people will vote in the “Save Our Swiss Gold” initiative on November 30th shows that the Swiss are leaning towards voting for the pro-gold initiative. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 21 Oct 2014 11:00 AM PDT Jim Grant is the publisher and editor of Grant's Interest Rate Observer, a bi-monthly newsletter that he founded in 1983, around the time when bonds were considered some of the worst investments – when they yielded 13 to 15 percent. Rick Rule, Chairman of Sprott US Holdings Inc., often quotes Jim Grant's description of government bonds as 'return-free risk.' (Rick sees US Treasuries as the 'anti-gold'). Mr. Grant took my questions on interest rates and the bond market – including Bill Gross' recent departure from PIMCO – via phone from his Manhattan office. Mr. Grant, you argue that companies whose share prices are rising should be becoming more efficient – hence driving down the costs of consumer goods and services. The Fed is succeeding in keeping both stock market prices and consumer goods prices moving higher – which look like contradictory goals. Do you think this situation is sustainable going forward? Many years ago, falling prices were a sign of improved efficiency and expanding wealth, and of widening consumer choice. Thanks to the spread of electricity and other such wonders in the final quarter of the 19th century, prices dwindled year by year at a rate of 1.5% to 2% per year. People didn't call it deflation – they called it progress. Similarly, in the 1920's there were advances in production techniques. The prices didn't decline and didn't rise. They were stable. Looking back on the 20's from the vantage point of the 30's, many people wondered why prices had not fallen. They concluded that it was because the central banks were emitting too much credit, and that credit had served to inflate asset values. It had also pushed the world into a very imbalanced credit and monetary situation towards the close of the 20's. Fast forward many generations and here we are today with a world-wide labor market linked through digital technology. We are the beneficiaries of Moore's law. Nearly every day we see new, wonderful, labor-enhancing machinery coming into the workplace – including new software. And yet, prices don't fall. They tend to rise, albeit by 1% or 2% per year. Central banks seem to want more than that. You do wonder – I wonder – what would be wrong with what Wall Mart calls 'everyday low and lower prices.' People seem to rather relish that – certainly when shopping on the weekends. Central banks want no part of it. So, I see that as a contradiction. What central banking policy has done is to inflate consumer prices that, if the laws of supply and demand were properly functioning, would have tended to fall. At the same time, central bank policy has tended to inflate the prices of stocks, bonds, and income-producing real-estate. Why it is that these immense emissions of new credit by the central banks have not been inflationary? Well, it seems to me that they have been inflationary, because prices are rising not falling. Do you think that the situation will continue going forward – rising consumer prices along with rising stock prices? What I don't know about the future, we don't have the time to go into. I dare say that stock prices will not continue to rise uninterrupted at the same pace. That's not a very interesting prediction, but the stock market is certainly a cyclical thing. Stock prices will pull back in the fullness of time, whether it starts 5 minutes, 5 months, or 5 years from now. I think it's fair to observe that today's ultra-low interest rates flatter stock market valuations. Stock prices are partly valued based on a discounted flow of dividend income. To the extent that the discount rate you use to value that stream of dividend income, which depends on interest rates, is artificially low, stock prices are artificially high. I think that the burden of proof is on anyone who would assert that we are in a new age of persistently and steadily rising stock prices. On the subject of bond markets, you've said: "does it not seem incongruous to chase low-yielding fixed-income securities denominated in a currency that the central bank is vowing to inflate?" Why do you think that investors go into bonds despite the Fed's intention to devalue them over time? Well, I can't explain it. I can try to piece together what might be driving people to do that, but, to me, it's a mystery. One thing to bear in mind is that bond prices have been rising and yields have been falling since fall of 1981. That's a long time and there's something in financial markets that we might call 'muscle memory.' Long-running trends tend to gather force, just as a rock rolling down a hill tends to pick up speed. There's something about the persistence and age of this bull market that leads more people to think that it will continue. That said, fixed-income investors are intelligent and reasoning people. That can't be the entire explanation. I see that in Europe money market interest rates are trending below zero. You have to search long and hard over the globe to find government securities in developed countries yielding more than 2%. In Ireland, some short-term securities are yielding less than 0%. Why would people buy them? I simply don't know – I can't fathom it –, but they certainly are, hand over fist. You've also said that Treasury investors may 'repent at their leisure' for buying US Securities, and that corporate investors will one day wish they had not invested so heavily in corporate bonds. Do you see a bear market coming imminently for bonds? Yes – starting about 2002… Henry, now, that's meant to be a laugh line. I have wholly been way out of step with the bond market for a long time, and everything that I say with regards to the future of interest rates deserves to be written in something like invisible ink. You know, in a work entitled 'Security Analysis,' a work about value investing written by Benjamin Graham and David Dodd, this approximate phrase appears: "bond selection is a negative art." Well, what Graham and Dodd meant by that is that, because the buyer of a bond at par can do no better than getting his money back and earning some interest along the way, the prospect for gain is inherently limited. Risk ought to be at the front of the mind of the creditor. There are no 2 or 3-baggers in investment-grade bond investing. You have to be mindful of what can go wrong, and it seems that the world over, thanks to these policies by central banks, bond investors are not looking at risk, or feel they can't afford to look at risk. Rather, they are grasping at the few straws of yield that remain and I think that posterity will look back at this with wonder. "Think of it" – I'm now putting words in posterity's mouth. "Think of it, people were buying as if the supply were limited. They were buying government securities, which yielded practically nothing. They were buying bonds denominated in currencies that the central banks explicitly vowed to depreciate. Why did they do that?" So, I think posterity will ask that question. Certainly I am asking that question now, and I can't come up with a really persuasive answer. What would a bear market in bonds look like? Would it be accompanied by a bear market in the stocks? Well, we have a pretty good historical record of what a bear market in bonds would look like. We had one in modern history, from 1946 to 1981. We had 25 years' worth of persistently – if not steadily – rising interest rates, and falling bond prices. It began with only around a quarter of a percent on long-dates US Treasuries, and ended with about 15% on long-dated US Treasuries. That's one historical beacon. I think that the difference today might be that the movement up in yield, and down in price, might be more violent than it was during the first ten years of the bear market beginning in about 1946. Then, it took about ten years for yields to advance even 100 basis points, if I remember correctly. One difference today is the nature of the bond market. It is increasingly illiquid and it is a market in which investors – many investors – have the right to enter a sales ticket, and to expect their money within a day. So I'm not sure what a bear market would look like, but I think that it would be characterized at first by a lot of people rushing through a very narrow gate. I think problems with illiquidity would surface in the corporate debt markets. One of the unintended consequences of the financial reforms that followed the sorrows of 2007 to 2009 is that dealers who used to hold a lot of corporate debt in inventories no longer do so. If interest rates began to rise and people wanted out, I think that the corporate debt market would encounter a lot of 'air pockets' and a lot of very discontinuous action to the downside. Is it possible for the Fed to 'lose control' of the bond market and yields? Absolutely, it could. The Fed does not control events for the most part. Events certainly will end up controlling the Fed. To answer your question – yeah. I think the Fed can and will lose control of the bond market. So no matter how many bonds the Fed buys, it eventually won't be enough to keep yields low? Well, let's try to imagine a case where the Fed proposed to buy every single bond in existence. To do that, it would undertake to print more money than we – even us hardened veterans of the QE era – could imagine. If the Fed undertook to print the money necessary to buy all the bonds on offer, it would spook at least the more thoughtful investors, who would see that the Fed would certainly be undertaking a truly radical program of inflation. It seems like the Fed is doing almost exactly that today – and we're still waiting to see the adverse effects. Well, yes indeed. I think this is a time where people will look back on us and see it as a period of practically central bank worship. The central bankers – Draghi, Yellen, Bernanke – have become almost celebrities in America. People have invested unreasonable hopes in what these central banks can know, and what they can do. I think that, sooner or later, the investing public will become disillusioned of these ideas. What are 'safe haven assets' if you believe that a bear market in bonds is inevitable? Well, if we believe that financial markets are cyclical, then bear markets are inevitable — just as bull markets are inevitable. I wish I could tell you when these will happen – I can't. I think that the nature of a safe haven will depend on the type of bear market and the reason for that bear market. You can imagine a bear market in bonds where the reason was an unscripted burst of prosperity. Let's say that the indestructible American economy, for whatever reason, got back its mojo, and the Fed seemed to be way behind the curve. Interest rates would go up for the wholesome reason that things were looking better. At that point, you could make a very good case for common stocks. If the bond market sold off because of a sudden and unscripted loss of confidence in the currency, that would be a different matter altogether. I think that 'safety' is not inherent to any asset – rather, 'safety' is a function in large part of valuation. Towards the tail end of the great bond bear market of 1946 to 1981, people were fed up with fixed-income securities. They only seemed to go down in price –investors were always disappointed. They slapped various labels of scorn on the entire asset class. That was when people first called them 'certificates of confiscation' – and that was when they yielded 13%, 14%, or 15%. They certainly were not certificates of confiscation as events revealed. Today, when bonds yield a great deal less than 13, 14, or 15%, most investors regard them as intrinsically safe assets. Well, they are not intrinsically safe. They are popular – that's a very different matter. At Grant's, we try to look for assets that are castoff, unpopular, out-of-favor, and value-laden. We have been looking at common stocks in, for example, Argentina and Russia. These are places that would appear to be inherently unsafe. We've of course been looking at gold and gold mining shares for a long time too. What gold, Argentina, and Russia have in common is that people are, by and large, going from them rather than towards them. If you asked the average person on the street whether securities relating to those three areas were safe or unsafe, I think that 99 out of 100 would say 'unsafe.' There is a great deal to be said for the ultimate safety that low valuations afford. That's how we approach the situation. A little bit less exotically, we've been looking at business development companies generating attractive cash flows in this time of 'yield famine.' 'Safety' is a tricky and paradoxical concept. The safe assets are often the ones that people regard as hopelessly risky. One more question – Bill Gross recently announced his departure from PIMCO. Is this a trivial event, or a sign of something more fundamental happening in the bond market? I don't know how to read it. Maybe after 40-odd years in the same place, Bill Gross deserved a change of scenery? I think he has enough money to retire – I dare say he could scrape by on a billion or so. He seems to want to continue to work – that's laudable. Insofar as his exit having a deeper meaning, it may be to underscore the new illiquidity of the bond market. On news of his exit, a lot of different classes of fixed-income securities sold off, and I wouldn't have expected Treasuries and mortgages to move the way they did. We at Grant's think that the illiquidity of fixed-income securities might be one of the important themes of the coming autumn for the bond market. By 'illiquidity,' you mean that investors are unable to buy and sell bonds easily? It's not difficult to buy them. So it's difficult to sell them. Correct. What you want is a 'greater optimist' and it's not clear that a 'greater optimist' will be available when you want to get out. James Grant founded Grant’s Interest Rate Observer in 1983 following a stint at Barron’s, where he originated the “Current Yield” column. His books include works of financial history, finance and biography. They are: "Bernard M. Baruch: The Adventures of a Wall Street Legend" (Simon & Schuster, 1983); "Money of the Mind: Borrowing and Lending from the Civil War to Michael Milken" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1992); "Minding Mr. Market" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1993); "The Trouble with Prosperity" (Times Books, 1996); "John Adams: Party of One" (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005); "Mr. Market Miscalculates" (Axios Press, 2008); and "Mr. Speaker! The Life and Times of Thomas B. Reed, the Man Who Broke the Filibuster" (Simon & Schuster, 2011). | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 21 Oct 2014 11:00 AM PDT Graceland Update | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| First Poll In Swiss Gold Referendum Shows Tight Race Posted: 21 Oct 2014 10:50 AM PDT | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Goldbroker puts French subtitles on GATA secretary's interview with Larry Parks Posted: 21 Oct 2014 10:23 AM PDT 12:20p CT Tuesday, October 21, 2014 Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: While your secretary/treasurer took four years of it in high school, when it comes to French he still doesn't know "merde." Fortunately GATA's friends at bullion dealer Goldbroker.com -- -- are fluent in the language and, thinking well of your secretary/treasurer's recent half-hour interview on "The Larry Parks Show" in New York, have affixed French subtitles to the video. Now you can both hear the interview in English and read it in French at the same time. English speakers who have French-speaking friends might want to send it along to them. It's posted at YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSaJeeDvZS8&list=UUhAtvq0H8Im_c6e4owfiw0... Exposing gold price suppression has never been more romantic. CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer ADVERTISEMENT Sinclair's Next Market Seminar Is Nov. 15 in San Francisco Mining entrepreneur and gold advocate Jim Sinclair will hold his next market seminar from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, November 15, at the Holiday Inn at San Francisco International Airport in South San Francisco, California. Admission will be $100. For more information and to register, please visit: http://www.jsmineset.com/2014/10/10/san-francisco-qa-session-announced/ Join GATA here: New Orleans Investment Conference https://jeffersoncompanies.com/landing/noic2014?IDPromotion=614011014520... Mines and Money London http://www.minesandmoney.com/london/ * * * Support GATA by purchasing DVDs of our London conference in August 2011 or our Dawson City conference in August 2006: http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html Or by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: To contribute to GATA, please visit: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Peter Schiff - Ending QE Will Plunge US Into Severe Recession Posted: 21 Oct 2014 10:21 AM PDT Peter Schiff is a well-known commentator appearing regularly on CNBC, TechTicker and FoxNews. He is often referred to as "Doctor Doom" because of his bearish outlook on the economy and the U.S. Dollar in particular. Peter was one of the first from within the professional investment field to... [[ 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! ]]  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Poll finds support for Swiss gold repatriation referendum proposal Posted: 21 Oct 2014 08:53 AM PDT 10:50a CT Tuesday, October 21, 2014 Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: GoldCore's Mark O'Byrne reports today that the first opinion poll on Switzerland's gold repatriation referendum proposal shows 45 percent of respondents in favor and 39 percent opposed: http://www.goldcore.com/goldcore_blog/First_Swiss_Gold_Poll_Shows_Pro_Go... CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer 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: New Orleans Investment Conference https://jeffersoncompanies.com/landing/noic2014?IDPromotion=614011014520... Mines and Money London http://www.minesandmoney.com/london/ * * * Support GATA by purchasing DVDs of our London conference in August 2011 or our Dawson City conference in August 2006: http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html Or by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: To contribute to GATA, please visit: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The Crash of 2014: A Special Briefing for All Casey Subscribers Posted: 21 Oct 2014 08:30 AM PDT Dear Subscribers and Readers, As CEO of Casey Research, I’m issuing an urgent alert: Over the last several months, our team has accumulated significant evidence that a market crash is imminent. Dominick Graziano, our lead technical analyst and contributor to The Casey Report, has been following this movement for months. In August, he warned that “several reliable signals portend a stock market correction, or worse” to come as we reentered trading season. He also correctly predicted oil’s tumble and much more broadly that “the dollar is likely headed much higher, and commodities lower, in the months ahead.” The worrisome setup for these conclusions was a convergence of multiple technical indicators in a way that hasn’t been seen in decadesnot even in 2008. Starting 10 days ago, those same signals intensified, showing that the correction has begun. As the S&P 500 crossed its 200-day moving average for the first time since the last big crash, this crash moved from inevitable to imminent. The chart below shows price action in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which has completely reversed course after a remarkable 1,120 day bull run, and with remarkable speed: There was another time in history when the Dow ignored fundamental problems, bad financial news, and huge political shifts for many months, only to make a sudden about-face. That was in 1929: (Click to Enlarge Chart) In the wake of that move, the Index lost nearly 50% of its value in a matter of weeks. One chart, of course, does not mean that we’re headed for a 1929-level crash nor are we predicting this one will get that bad. However, this is but one example of several indicators that have changed in such a dramatic way that it’s now clear a serious crash is beginning. As we’ve been warning, the Fed’s actions post 2008 were only effective in kicking the can down the road. This allowed governments to ignore the structural issues undermining any recovery. Instead, the Fed’s zero-interest-rate policy and successive rounds of QE only facilitated bigger debt and asset bubbles. Unfortunately, we’re now emerging from the figurative eye of the storm. As my partner Doug Casey says, it’s likely that it will be much, much worse than even he can imagine. It will make the 2008 correction look like a walk in the park. All of our research points out to a very serious correctiona crash, by a more accurate nameand we think it’s essential that subscribers take emergency measures to prepare. Like preparing for a hurricane, you can hope it won’t hit too hard, or with only minimal cost or inconvenience you can board up the house, head inland for a bit, and be sure you’re safe. I sincerely believe that all readers should act immediately, and have instructed my team to prepare a special report with much more detailed information on the indicators that have led us to these conclusions, as well as the specific strategies you can use to protect yourself. All active subscribers to Casey Research paid publications have free access to this in depth report, and I encourage you to download it immediately (login required): If you aren’t a subscriber, I still think it’s important for you to know how to deal with this situation, so we’re making the same guidance available for a nominal cost to anyone who wishes to prepare for this crash. Click here for details on accessing the report for nonsubscribers. Time is of the essence. With a little preparation, you can easily weather this storm and significantly reduce any losses. Better yet, you will have assets to deploy on the other side. Like those who saw 2008 coming, it’s an opportunity not just to survive but to thrive in the inevitable recovery on the other end, whatever shape it takes. Sincerely, | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Gold & Silver Show Mixed Signals While Bitcoin Shows Relative Strength Posted: 21 Oct 2014 07:57 AM PDT Uncertainty is in the air as Europe continues to head towards a recession, the IMF cuts global growth projections and the Federal Reserve expresses concern about these global conditions slowing its interest rate tightening agenda even though indicators are showing forward progress. Gold and bitcoin had a positive week while silver declined slightly, and the correlation between bitcoin and gold has started to weaken. Macroeconomic SnapshotJobless Claims: This indicator made moves this week. Claims declined 23,000 to a total of 264,000 jobless claims, the lowest amount since April 2000. These numbers further indicate that the US economy continues to recover and create new jobs. Housing Starts: New construction of homes progressed upward. After a drop of 12.8% in August, starts are up 6.3% for September. Multi-family home construction led the rise with a 16.7% growth, while single-family home construction brought down the average with only 1.1% growth. This data suggests that Americans are willing to invest in building new homes, something that will increase demand for construction related goods and services, boosting the economy. Retail Sales: Sales figures disappointed this week as they fell a third of percent from last month, to a total spending of $442.7B. However, a longer term view shows that retail sales is 4.3% ahead of September 2013. An observation from this data is that food services and drinking places gained 0.6%: This is a discretionary spending area and suggests United States consumers are spending.. On Wednesday, October 22nd the consumer price index, or inflation, data will be released. This metric may further help to confirm insights into the growth narrative of the American economy and may guide the Fed's tightening schedule. The state of the Eurozone and the global economy should be monitored by smart investors because Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer in a speech last week commented:
The global macroeconomic picture shows the IMF taking a negative view. They cut their projections for global growth by 0.3%, that is led by Europe's stagnating economy that now has a risk of entering a recession in the next six months of 38%. The ECB has not clearly outlined exactly what kinds of of securities and exactly how much they will be buying in their ABS buyback plan. Historical views of the debt-to-GDP ratios in the Eurozone shows ongoing issues. Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Ireland all have ratios over 100% and are growing that ratio at least 5% a year. This issue now becomes a bigger risk since the Eurozone's probability of entering a deflationary recession has grown. Debt and deflation do not mix well: Debt becomes more difficult to pay off and could lead to a possible default on payments. Inflation growth is threatened by a strengthening dollar and falling oil prices. A weakening global economy may also push the dollar's value higher. Furthermore, the 10-year TIPS, a note offered by the US Treasury that is used as a tool to gauge inflation expectations, has also been in steady decline since April from 0.6 to 0.3 today , suggesting that investors do not predict high inflation growth. So far the activity in Europe has not clearly leaked into the American economy because the Boston Fed president says that they expect to stay on their current timeline for adjusting rates. He mentions, however, not to rule out the possibility of a shift in plans.
The signals are currently mixed for precious metals. On one hand, driving factors like a healthy US Economy and strengthening USD are creating conditions for gold and silver to continue its decline. What could change the direction for precious metals is how the global economy affects the US economy: if it leaks in and slows the Fed's tightening, we could expect to see precious metals rise. If the US remains unhampered by the global economy and the dollar continues to strengthen, gold could continue on Goldman Sachs forecasted path of $1050/oz to end the 2014. Bitcoin's correlation with gold has started to reverse, moving to +0.76 from a high last week of +0.88. This makes forecasting future bitcoin price movements more difficult if it is beginning to act less like gold, who's behavior has become well-understood in relation to the US economic narrative of growth and Federal Reserve tightening. Right now, the bitcoin market remains very stochastic and open to market manipulation. There are no clear demand-side factors that we can rely on for sustained demand of the currency. Bitcoin and Precious Metals Reads:: Richard Brown has the right line of thinking about Bitcoin. In a recent post, he discusses the use cases for Bitcoin in the future, and he focuses on the blockchain aspect that can enable other technologies and ideas previously impossible. :: A look back into history provides a case for gold during deflationary periods. The author uses the great depression as an example as to why gold could be a good hedge. For people in countries in risk of inflation, this is an important read. :: China is among the largest gold consumers in the world. Here, the Chairman of the Shanghai Gold Exchange delivers a speech that will you provide you insight into their gold market. He provides figures about their volumes, gold demand, and forecasts for the future gold market of China. :: Machine learning algorithms can be used to tell what bitcoin address are associated with a private key on the blockchain. Doing so can provide extra information about the bitcoin ecosystem, like knowing where bitcoins have come and gone, or what kinds of transactions your business competitor is conducting. GoldBeginning late Sunday night on the international markets at $1223/oz, gold exhibited volatility that resulted in a higher ending position by the end of the Friday. Traders saw a $22 per ounce or or 0.7% rally on Wednesday over a six hour window that brought prices from $1222/oz to $1244/oz. This rally was timed with the Fed's statement that the global economic slowdown could possibly delay the interest rate increase. Since, it has met resistance at $1245/oz and centered around $1240/oz but now settles at $1238/oz for the end of the week. SilverSilver's position for the week only declined about half a percent between Monday and Friday, starting at $17.40/oz and ending at $17.27/oz. Its movements somewhat tracked gold's, but it did have the same reaction to the Fed's statement Wednesday where it made a $0.50 gain. Since that rally it declined $0.25/oz. BitcoinThe digital currency had an overall upward trend for the week that included a large $50 rally through Tuesday and Wednesday. Starting the week at a low of $355/BTC, it remained relatively flat until Tuesday night where it started its %12 gain that peaked out at $408/BTC. The gains were not totally preserved as it ends the week now at $382/BTC.
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| Fed Emergency - Fabricated Recovery Is Stalling Posted: 21 Oct 2014 07:07 AM PDT Hidden Secrets Of Money is a world-leading educational series that is sponsored by, and also based on the priciples of WealthCycles. It shows the evolution of gold and silver as money, and teaches the historical economic mistakes that all societies repeat. [[ 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! ]]  | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Swiss Gold Vote: Should You Be Worried? Posted: 21 Oct 2014 03:55 AM PDT Switzerland's gold referendum will force the SNB central bank to buy more than it sold in 2000-2008... The SWISS GOLD VOTE in November – "Should I be worried?" asks a BullionVault user owning metal in Zurich, writes Adrian Ash at the world-leading physical gold and silver exchange online. It's no idle question. Governments do nasty things when they need to buy or keep hold of an asset. Witness the United States' compulsory gold purchase of April 1933 for instance...and its ban on hoarding, exporting or trading gold. Big difference here is that the Swiss public gets to vote on what drives such measures. Thanks to their petition system, the country's junkies get junk on prescription...while minarets are banned. The changes proposed for 30 November would compel the Swiss National Bank to:
This is a Swiss decision, and with the Franc effectively "backed" by gold again if this passes, it's really not for us British turkeys...earning and holding British Pounds Sterling...to say whether or not a foreign nation should vote for Christmas. But personally speaking, I'm no fan of central-bank gold hoarding. It tends to mark dark times, and still darker plans on the part of government. The Swiss government is in fact pitted against this new gold plan. But still, it's better by far to let gold circulate freely, I believe...outside state vaults and in private hands...just like the truly classical Gold Standard worked. But let's put my hopeless idealism, and the economic wisdom (or otherwise) of this 1930s-style Gold Standard proposal aside (for that is what it is). Just how desperate might the Swiss authorities become if the vote passes? Put another way, what impact might it have on the supply/demand balance worldwide, and hence prices? First, the security of gold property held in Zurich or Bern, under the tarmac at Kloten or beneath the Gotthard mountains. Switzerland is a highly open economy, with financial services earning a huge portion of its tax revenues and employing nearly 6% of the working age population. Its banking reputation may have been dented in recent years (and its hard-won bank secrecy laws look set to be crushed by the European Union kowtowing to the US juggernaut). But physical gold storage, alongside refining imported gold bullion for export, continues to be a crucial industry. By our reckoning, the world's investors added 1,400 tonnes of gold to private and bank vaults in Switzerland between 2009 and 2013. For non-bank storage of physical property, it remains by far the most popular choice amongst BullionVault users, holding nearly 75% of the current record-high levels of client gold. To the best of our knowledge, no country enjoying such revenue – nor any state enjoying such confidence from foreign wealth – has ever turned it away. Even during the UK's balance of payments' crisis of the 1970s, foreign-owned bullion was allowed to enter and leave freely, sidestepping both VAT sales tax and the exchange controls blocking private British ownership of gold. London of course remains the centre of bullion dealing worldwide, just as Switzerland remains the No.1 choice for investment storage. It's very hard indeed to see Switzerland attempting any kind of expropriation, compulsory purchase, exchange controls or punitive taxation – most especially of foreign-owned gold. So, with theft highly unlikely (especially against the popular pro-gold backdrop of a successful referendum), might the SNB rush to buy gold in December after the 30th November vote? Complicating factors start with the referendum process itself. Next month's question gives no time limit for completing the extra gold buying, nor for repatriation of existing stock from foreign central-bank care. But if voters look harder (and they'll be urged to think hard by the pro-gold billboard campaign set to start mid-November), then supporting documents set a deadline of 2 years for bringing the current gold home, and 5 years for reaching that 20% target. However, the clock will start running from the date of "acceptance". But is that acceptance by voters (ie, November 30th) or by parliament and thus the regional cantons (ie, into Swiss law)? This matters, because Swiss referenda, when approved by the public, can take up to 3 years to become law. So the whole process...if the SNB accepts its fate and doesn't work with the government to refuse, reject or somehow revoke the Swiss public's decision...could last up to 8 years. Expect delays. SNB president Jordan has long spoken against the vote, and vice-chair Danthine did so this month (invoking the threat of deflation and Euro-led recession). Those policymakers are unelected, so Switzerland's referendum pits popular, if not populist will against the technocrats. But elected politicians also oppose the move (and by a wide margin). Even if passed, in short, the spirit of the new rules will likely be hampered by those people charged with enshrining and then enacting them. The SNB is also a signatory to the fourth Central Bank Gold Agreement. Running for 5 years from 27 Sept. this year, it obliges the 22 central banks involved to "continue to coordinate their gold transactions so as to avoid market disturbances." The expected transactions were of course sales (the first CBGA was signed after the UK's sudden and clumsy gold sales announcement of mid-1999), but this treaty only offers further cover for delaying, going slow, or otherwise tempering the impact of buying. An object lesson in central-bank recaltricance is the repatriation of Germany's gold. Wanting some 300 tonnes from New York and 374 from Paris, the Bundesbank's plan announced in January 2013 is scheduled for completion in 2020. Yet last year, only 5% of that total was shipped, barely one-third the average run rate required. Whatever the reasons, there really isn't any hurry, not for the central bankers involved at either end of the transfer. As for retrieving Switzerland's current overseas gold holdings, we're given to believe the Bank of England can "dig out" a 20-tonne shipment every two days. So if 20% of the SNB's metal is still there in London, it could expect to get back the UK holdings inside 1 month. But only if the Bank of England devotes its entire vault staff to that task alone (it holds another 5,000 or so tonnes belonging to other customers besides the UK Treasury), and only if central-banking's "old world" handshakes and winks are thrown over to appease public opinion. Again, don't bet on it. Central bankers have fat brass necks when it comes to defending themselves under cover of mutual independence from national governments and their voting publics. So might history offer some clues to the timing of Swiss buying? Sucking in foreign money around WWII, and with exchange controls blocking many citizens abroad from buying investment bullion, Switzerland's own gold reserves grew from 450 tonnes to 1,940 between 1940 and 1960. The sales starting 2000 took eight years to dispose of that much again, this time into a bullish free market (and again, after a public vote). Now something around 220 tonnes per year might be wanted – sizeable quantities to be sure, but in line with recent sources of demand like gold miners buying back the huge forward sales they'd made to insure against lower prices at the turn of the century (dehedging averaged 260 tonnes per year between 2000 and 2012) or the growth rate of new Chinese consumer demand (100 tonnes per year 2004 to 2013). That extra demand, however, came during a strong bull market in prices. Miner dehedging in particular put a strong bid in the market, helping drive prices higher both mechanically (see the spike of early 2006 for instance) and psychologically (if gold-miner hedging had been bad for investor sentiment, then de-hedging could only be good). Many people now believe that forcing the SNB to hold 20% of its assets as gold will clearly drive market prices higher. Added to the repatriation of all Switzerland's existing gold reserves...which could catch the cosy world of central banking asleep as Swiss law demands the gold is returned...it is expected to spark a huge squeeze on physical supplies worldwide. We're not so sure. Heavy central-bank gold sales during the 1990s are widely held to have pushed gold prices down. But those sales continued until the financial crisis began. By then, gold prices were 3 times higher from their lows of 2001, replaying what happened in the late 1970s, when the US Treasury was a big seller. Relatively heavy purchases – this time by emerging-market states – then coincided with the 2011 peak. But again, those purchases have continued as prices fell steeply. Yes, back in 1998-2000, the Swiss gold sales discussed and then begun at the turn of this century helped drive the final nails into gold's coffin-lid. But sandbagging the price, and dismaying dealers (as well as "bitter end" investors enduring the two-decade bear market starting with 1980's peak at $850 per ounce), those huge sales in fact laid the floor for the 12-year bull market which followed. Free from central-bank vaults like no time since before the First World War, gold rose and kept rising as private Western households, then Asian consumers, money managers and emerging-market central banks joined the gold miners themselves in buying bullion. Gold is nearly as rich in irony as it is in politics. If the Swiss pro-gold campaign is trying to gerrymander a price-rise by forcing the SNB to turn buyer, history may yet – we fear – have the last laugh. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Stefan Ioannou: Copper, Nickel and Zinc Won't Be Cheap for Long Posted: 21 Oct 2014 01:00 AM PDT The all-powerful U.S. dollar is currently hammering base metals and base metal equities. Haywood Securities Mining Analyst Stefan Ioannou says that increasing demand and near-term supply shortages make base metals a bargain that won't last. In this interview with The Mining Report, Ioannou argues that juniors with good deposits and low costs are in a unique position to benefit, and lists several companies that look to do just that. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Oil Deflation, the Saudi’s Muslim Frankenstein, and the Colder War Posted: 20 Oct 2014 11:28 PM PDT Deflation [dih-fley-shuhn]
The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) published a very compelling chart last week; it shows that the net energy imports of the US as a share of consumption are at their lowest level in 29 years. How can this be? The reason is shale oil. The success of the shale oil sector—specifically horizontal drilling and fracking shale—has caused a significant increase in domestic US production. This is nothing new, and certainly isn’t a surprise to our subscribers. But what is interesting was Saudi Arabia’s reaction to the increase in domestic US production. The United States had been Saudi Arabia’s largest oil customer… until the US Fed’s quantitative easing policy created cheap money, which fueled the shale revolution in the US. Today, China is Saudi Arabia’s new best friend. The Saudis cut the spot price of oil to China and caused a significant whiplash in oil prices, which sent international oil markets from US$95 a barrel to below USD$85 a barrel. According to the EIA, China is expected to surpass the US as the world’s largest oil importer by the end of 2014. Saudi Arabia has taken an aggressive stance in slashing prices and maintaining its market share; and as a result, other oil producers will suffer, specifically ISIS. Interestingly, there’s strong evidence suggesting that it is in fact Saudi Arabia which created the Frankenstein monster that is today’s ISIS. Let’s take a quick look back into the region’s history. Saudi Arabia and Qatar have both funded Wahhabi Salafism under the guise of education. What is now ISIS originally took to the early teachings of Wahhabi Salafism, the goal of which is to convert Muslims and others to its “purer” form of Islam. In short, they’re extremists that make up less than 3% of the global Muslim population; this movement has been on the rise since 9/11. Now I’ll put all the pieces of the puzzle together. In the early days of the Syrian civil war, Saudi Arabian leaders were quite pleased with the initial Sunni fighters against Assad, but they weren’t happy when Russian President Vladimir Putin stood his ground and backed a longtime Russian ally in the Assad regime. Saudi Arabia tried to sway Russia to turn its back on Assad’s regime in 2013, going so far as to dangle multibillion-dollar military contracts and other financial economic “incentives”… or what’s realistically known as a bribe. Putin would have none of it. He politely rejected the Saudis offer and stood his ground, with China in Russia’s corner. Fast forward to mid-2014, and the Saudis have a Frankenstein on their hands. Its name is ISIS. Yes, ISIS is a major oil exporter in the black market. If this sounds confusing, let me take you into the dark, back alleys of the Middle East oil trade. “ISIS” stands for Islamic state of Iraq and the Levant. ISIS has been taking over oil-producing regions in Iraq and has been funding its military advances by selling oil on the black markets (specifically, in Turkey) at a discount, roughly 50,000 bopd. It’s the dark secret of the Middle East oil sector, but it’s happening. ISIS first started selling smuggled Syrian oil in Turkey, making millions a day, but Obama doesn’t want that information widely known, so it was put on the down low. Politicians in Turkey have publicly stated that ISIS has sold US$800 million worth of stolen, black-market oil in Turkey alone. ISIS then expanded into Iraq and has captured oil wells in Iraq—even the Russians have stated that ISIS has been selling “stolen” or captured oil from Iraq on the black markets. It’s much easier to sell stolen oil at a discount than oil that one produces. So what can the Saudis do to take down their own Frankenstein? The Saudis only nuclear-level weapon is oil. Having realized that China had surpassed the US as their biggest oil buyer, the Saudis decided to start taking big discounts and continuing to pump oil to increase their market share in Asia. Now the Saudis are attempting to hit four birds with one stone:
Don’t Mess with Putin: He Isn’t Your Regular PoliticianRussia isn’t cutting back its production—rather, Russia is hitting post-Soviet highs in oil production. Thus we see tumbling oil prices. But how low can this go? Let’s get back to basics of supply and demand to answer this question. In the last 35 years, world oil consumption growth has gone into negative growth (meaning below zero growth—meaning world uses less oil) only twice. The first was the 1980s recession; the second instance was the global financial crisis of late 2008. But during both times, the US was without a doubt the world’s largest consumer and importer of oil. Essentially, the world consumption of oil is directly and positively correlated with the real US GDP. In fact, the correlation is +0.99, which is about as good as it gets when it comes to correlation coefficients. However, horizontal drilling and fracking has increased US domestic oil production, and as a result, US net imports as a share of consumption are at their lowest level in 29 years. Over the last 35 years, China has awakened and has become a game changer in the global energy markets. It will continue to play that role. According to the EIA, China is well on its way to becoming the world’s largest importer of oil. China consumes about 11 million bopd—and it’s expected to match US consumption by 2030. However, the growth of the US domestic oil production from shale oil is not cheap oil production… and shale oil comes with a high decline in production. What Happens to US Domestic Oil Production at $75 Oil?On average, an Eagle Ford or Bakken shale oil well needs US$55-$70 oil to make a decent profit, in order to continue drilling to replace the decline rates of existing shale oil wells. Many other shale oil formations need higher than $70 oil to break even. Thus, we can expect the incredible growth of domestic US oil production (primarily as a result of the Bakken in North Dakota and Eagle Ford in Texas) to become significantly impacted at prices below $75. This means lower domestic oil production rates, which then means importing more oil from either Canada or the Middle East. However, Canadian oil isn’t any cheaper to produce than American oil; therefore, one can expect Canadian oil growth to also start declining at $75 oil. The only blessing for Canadian producers in this scenario is a weaker Canadian dollar. This is all good news for the informed and prepared energy investor. In the September Casey Energy Report, we broke down all of the US oil producers and compared them to the Canadian oil producers, explaining the fundamental differences between the two. We’ve broken down all of the metrics company by company, and have our Buy list ready. In that report we stated that we would rather be patient than rush into a volatile sector. This month, we presented our first of three stocks that you must own in a declining oil market. These stocks will not only pay you an incredible yield, but each is the best company in its peer group in terms of metrics such as payout ratios, lowest-cost producer, and low debt. We’re excited about the market selling off and have been using $75 oil and $3 natural gas in our calculations. We’ve also stress tested every producer on both the US and Canadian stock exchanges and have our full analysis ready. In this month’s Casey Energy Report, we’ll explain to subscribers how to best position their portfolios to reap the rewards of a $75 oil price. And now, a personal note to all my readers.Over the last decade, I’ve traveled the world over trying to find the best resource investments. Some have worked out spectacularly well while others have failed, and others are still in the works. Doug Casey wanted me to write a book a few years ago, but I don’t see myself as a writer, but rather as an analyst and speculator. However, after my personal health challenges (which I’m proud to say I have under control), I thought I may want to get to my bucket list sooner than later, and the time was right for my first book. Its subject? The Colder War. The book covers many aspects of the geopolitics of energy… especially the struggle between Russia and the US to control the world’s energy trade. Some pretty influential people have endorsed my book, such as former Congressman Dr. Ron Paul, who stated: The Colder War provides a reversing contrast from the hysterical "Putin is Stalin, Jr., restart the Cold War" message emanating from the neocon think tanks and the mainstream media. Marin Katusa shows the real threat to the American people … You see, while America and the West weren’t looking, Vladimir Putin has been orchestrating a takeover of the energy sector. He has transformed Russia from a crumbling former Soviet state into an energy powerhouse to become: The second-largest oil exporter in the world, on pace to pass Saudi Arabia very soon; The largest uranium exporter in the world, powering 1 in 10 American homes; The largest natural gas exporter in the world, doling it out with an iron fist and willing to cut off supply and let harsh winters kill thousands to get its way. Russia is quickly becoming the only source for countries desperate to secure long-term supplies of energy—giving Putin more power and more leverage than ever before. Europe, Africa, and China are all dependent on Russian energy. And Putin won’t stop until he takes down the only thing standing in his way of turning Russia into a superpower: the US. Inside my book, you’ll discover that Putin is working to break the monopoly of the US dollar in the global energy trade. He’s set in motion in an ingenious yet devastating plan to do it. If Putin is successful, he could nuke the US economy and cost the average American dearly. Do you think the recent pullback in oil prices will cripple Putin? If you said yes, you’re wrong… and you really need to read my book. Friends and colleagues have told me that they’ve sat down and read it in the course of an evening. It’s that fascinating and easy to digest. Once you read it, your view of the world and the global markets will change. You might even want to call your broker the next morning—because the US has never been more vulnerable, and the stakes have never been higher… Preorder your copy of The Colder War and make sure you’re among the first to read this important book. Sincerely, Marin Katusa |
The wire services are reporting this morning that the European Central Bank is considering a plan to purchase corporate debt as part of a response to the Eurozone’s sluggish growth. That has pushed the Euro sharply lower and the Dollar higher by consequence but commodity buying is being seen regardless.
Latest figures from Russia show that the country's central bank purchased another 37.33 tonnes of gold in September, bringing its gold holdings to almost 1,150 tonnes and is the seventh month in a row it has increased it gold reserves, and noticeably its biggest monthly increase yet. Overall Russia has been building its reserves through much of the Putin era. (Vladimir Putin has been the President of Russia since 7 May 2012. He previously served as President from 2000 to 2008, and as Prime Minister of Russia from 1999 to 2000 and again from 2008 to 2012). President Putin is an avowed believer in the place of gold in the global economy.
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