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- A Tale of Two Cities
- Here’s a major risk you’re probably taking without even knowing it (and how to stop it)
- Gold heads back down
- Saudi Arabia Sentences 3 Lawyers to Jail for Tweets
- Physical Silver Being Drained From the COMEX
- Frightening magazine cover shows one of history’s worst ideas could be making a major comeback
- How Will The Stock Market React To The End Of Quantitative Easing?
- Don't trade more than you can afford to lose
- Weekly Gold close setting up to be Important
- Gold Wave 5 Low Coming
- How China Bought 10,000 Tons of Gold
- Silver Collapses to 56 Month Low
- Falling GLD Inventories - A Warning Sign Ignored by Gold Bulls
- Harvey Organ: Gold & Silver Whacked as QE Ends!
- The Crucial Questions Financial Journalism Won’t Ask And Central Banks Won’t Answer – New Orleans Investment Conference Presentation By GATA’s Chris Powell
- Tracking gold's downward move
- Marshall Swing on Coming Collapse: TPTB Want it (Gold & Silver) All!
- Fabian Calvo: The End of the Petrodollar & Dismantling of OPEC
- Prosecutors Reopening Cases Against Bank Recidivists; Change or “Change You Can Believe in”?
- Metals market update for October 30
- Silver prices drops heavily alongside gold
- Fed Ends QE? Greenspan Says Gold “Measurably” “Higher” In 5 Years
- Fed Ends QE? Greenspan Says Gold “Measurably” “Higher” In 5 Years
- Gold slides to 3-week low as dollar strengthens after Fed
- The London gold benchmark – a technical analyst’s view
- Confused investors turn to the monthly ArabianMoney private-circulation newsletter
- Swiss gold referendum likely to pass and send prices higher says Julius Baer’s Burkhard Varnholt
- Former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan says gold prices are going up ‘measurably’
- Greenspan: “The Price of Gold Will Rise—Measurably”
- Rosneft "Radical" Sanctions Retaliation Proposal Sends Russian Bonds, Currency Plunging
- Hugo Salinas Price: The Fall in International Reserve Assets
- Lawrence Williams: The new London gold ‘fix’ – the battle has commenced
- Greenspan: The Price of Gold Will Rise
- The Shadow Pyramid : Derivatives made easy
- Will the US bond market now collapse without all that buying by the Fed?
- Dollar rises and euro and yen fall as QE becomes history so what next for global currencies?
- From This Day Forward, We Will Watch How The Stock Market Performs Without The Fed’s Monetary Heroin
- Harvey Organ: Gold & Silver Whacked as QE Ends!
- Top 10 Gold & Silver Stocks
- “Retaliation”: The Feds have launched a new attack on Cliven Bundy
- You won't believe what former Fed head Alan Greenspan is saying now
| Posted: 30 Oct 2014 01:00 PM PDT It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was […] The post A Tale of Two Cities appeared first on Silver Doctors. |
| Here’s a major risk you’re probably taking without even knowing it (and how to stop it) Posted: 30 Oct 2014 01:00 PM PDT Just last Friday, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency shut down National Republic Bank of Chicago, costing the FDIC insurance fund $111 million. And there are a number of banks in the US (including Bank of America) that didn't fare well in the Fed's recent stress tests. Whether you realize it or not, […] The post Here's a major risk you're probably taking without even knowing it (and how to stop it) appeared first on Silver Doctors. |
| Posted: 30 Oct 2014 12:22 PM PDT Gold prices took a dip today as the FOMC ended its quantitative easing program. The Fed did, however, keep its language about keeping short-term rates low for a considerable period of time. |
| Saudi Arabia Sentences 3 Lawyers to Jail for Tweets Posted: 30 Oct 2014 12:00 PM PDT In Saudi Arabia, it appears that the "war on twitter" is now resulting in serious jail sentences. Submitted by Michael Krieger, Liberty Blitzkrieg: Saudi Arabia's fear of the viral free-speech platform Twitter has been well documented as of late. I first highlighted it last year in the post, Saudi Religious Police Chief Goes on the Attack…Against […] The post Saudi Arabia Sentences 3 Lawyers to Jail for Tweets appeared first on Silver Doctors. |
| Physical Silver Being Drained From the COMEX Posted: 30 Oct 2014 12:00 PM PDT Close to 20 million ounces have been removed from the "customer" accounts since February, held in vaults operated by banks like JP Morgan, Scotia and HSBC. Yet, at the same time, the paper silver futures open interest has soared to near all-time highs. At the beginning of January, there were approximately 132k contracts of silver open […] The post Physical Silver Being Drained From the COMEX appeared first on Silver Doctors. |
| Frightening magazine cover shows one of history’s worst ideas could be making a major comeback Posted: 30 Oct 2014 10:36 AM PDT From Zero Hedge: More and more people − including such shocking statist luminaries as Alan Greenspan (the person more responsible for today’s global depression than anyone else) and the Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee − are realizing that the old debt=growth, saving=bad, spending=prosperity, and inflation=utopia economic paradigm, the one unleashed by John Maynard Keynes, is the primary reason for today’s worldwide economic devastation… And then there is BusinessWeek, which quite to the contrary, is urging its readers in its cover story to ignore common sense and do more of the same that has led the world to the economic dead end it finds itself in currently… And spend, spend, spend, preferably on credit. Because, supposedly, this time the resulting crash from yet another debt-funded binge will be… different?
Then again, an article that has this line… With fiscal policy missing in action, the world’s biggest central banks tried heroically to plug the gap. … surely has to be premised on sarcasm. Hardly anyone can be so clueless not to realize that it is the “heroic” central banks “getting to work” for the past 6 years that has enabled fiscal policy to stay on the sidelines… and has led to the most dysfunctional Congress in history, to a Europe that in the past 5 years has implemented precisely zero reforms, and where nothing at all has changed… … except debt has hit new record highs, the amount of reserves in circulation is un-chartable, the number of billionaires is hitting new records every week (even as the people living on food stamps and out of the labor force is unprecedented), and, of course, the S&P 500 is at an all-time high. So we will operate on the assumption that indeed BusinessWeek’s Peter Coy, in his cover story, is merely pulling a prank. Because the alternative is far scarier, if funnier, to contemplate… There is a doctor in the house, and his prescriptions are more relevant than ever. True, he’s been dead since 1946. But even in the past tense, the British economist, investor, and civil servant John Maynard Keynes has more to teach us about how to save the global economy than an army of modern Ph.D.s equipped with models of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium. The symptoms of the Great Depression that he correctly diagnosed are back, though fortunately on a smaller scale: chronic unemployment, deflation, currency wars, and beggar-thy-neighbor economic policies. Some of the other pearls… This isn’t a stable status quo. The mid-October shock in global stock markets betrayed grave concerns about a relapse. While the U.S. economy is growing adequately for now despite the drag from fiscal policy, China’s pace is slowing, Japan is suffering from the self-inflicted wound of its consumption tax hike, and the 18-nation euro zone had zero growth in the second quarter. That simply isn’t good enough, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said in an October visit to Bloomberg. “You need all four wheels to be moving,” he said, “or it isn’t going to be a good ride.” Enter Lord Keynes. Cutting interest rates is fine for raising growth in ordinary times, he said, because lower rates induce consumers to spend rather than save while stimulating businesses to invest. But where rates sink to the “lower bound” of zero, he showed, central banks become nearly powerless, while fiscal policy (taxes and spending) becomes highly effective as a fix for inadequate demand. Governments can raise spending to stimulate demand without having to worry about crowding out private investment − because there’s plenty of unused capacity, and their spending won’t lift interest rates. It’s the closest thing economists have found to a free lunch. Keynes, ever the provocateur, argued that in a deep recession anything the government did to induce economic activity was better than nothing − even burying bottles stuffed with bank notes in coal mines for people to dig up. Of course, it’s far better if the money is spent well. Considering the crying need for better roads, bridges, tunnels, schools, and the like, it’s a no-brainer for governments to build them now, when there are willing hands and cheap loans. Harvard economist Lawrence Summers, a former Treasury secretary, and Brad DeLong of the University of California at Berkeley argued in 2012 that infrastructure investment might even pay for itself, in part by keeping people employed so their skills don’t atrophy. … Love him or hate him, there’s no one like Keynes on the world stage today. He was a statesman, a philosopher, a bohemian lover of ballet, and a member along with Virginia Woolf in the artsy, intellectual Bloomsbury Group. He made and lost fortunes as an investor and died rich. In 1919, in a prescient book called The Economic Consequences of the Peace, he condemned harsh reparations imposed on Germany after World War I, which were so punitive that they helped create the conditions for Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich. In 1936 he essentially invented the field of macroeconomics in his masterwork, The General Theory. From 1944 until close to his death at age 62 two years later, he led Britain’s delegation in negotiations that resulted in the founding of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The world was lucky in the 1970s and early 1980s, when finally Keynes lunacy quickly unravelled, when as even Coy admits, “his theories couldn’t readily account for stagflation the coexistence of high unemployment and high inflation.” Academic economists were drawn to the new theory of “rational expectations,” which said that government couldn’t possibly stimulate the economy through deficit spending because foresighted consumers would rationally expect that the stimulus would have to be paid for eventually and so would save for future tax hikes, offsetting the initiative. Supply-side economists said Keynes missed how low taxes could stimulate long-term growth by inducing work and investment. “Unsuccessful policies and confused debates have left Keynesian economics in disarray,” the Swedish economist Axel Leijonhufvud wrote in 1983 for a conference celebrating Keynes’s centennial. A successor theory that evolved in the 1980s and 1990s, New Keynesianism, attempted to inject rational expectations theory into Keynes’s worldview while preserving his observation that prices and wages are “sticky”− i.e., they don’t fall enough in a slump to equalize supply and demand. New Keynesians range from conservatives such as John Taylor of the Hoover Institution to liberals like Berkeley’s DeLong. Of course, what ended up happening is that one bad theory was replaced by an even worse one, when in the 1980s Alan Greenspan unleashed the “Great Moderation” genie and the Fed’s bubble factory was put on “max.” But that is a topic too complex for the BW author. Instead, he quotes Joe Lavorgna: On Wall Street, Keynesianism never really died, because its theories did a good job of explaining the short-term fluctuations bank economists are paid to predict. “We approach forecasting more from a Keynesian perspective whether we like him or not,” says Joseph LaVorgna, chief U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank Securities. Actually, Joe, speak for yourself. And then there is the inevitable outcome of the entire world following Keynesian policies. War. If Keynes were alive today, he might be warning of a repeat of 1937, when policy mistakes turned a promising recovery into history’s worst double dip. This time, Europe is the danger zone; then it was the U.S. What’s called the Great Depression was really two steep downturns in the U.S. The first ended in 1933. It was followed by four years of output growth averaging more than 9 percent a year, one of the strongest recoveries ever. What aborted the comeback is still debated. Some economists blame President Franklin Roosevelt for signing tax hikes and cuts in New Deal jobs programs. Others blame the Federal Reserve. Dartmouth College economist Douglas Irwin argues that the Roosevelt administration triggered the relapse by buying up gold, removing it from the U.S. monetary base. The move to prevent inflation succeeded all too well, causing deflation. Whatever the cause, Britain and other trading partners were dragged down, and U.S. output plunged and didn’t fully recover until America’s entry into World War II. “We are really at a kind of 1937 moment now,” says MIT’s Temin. “It’s a cautionary history for us.” In short, let’s accelerate the world’s collapse into yet another global war and listen to Keynes once again. Judging by the number of all out conflicts around the globe, and how much the latest “war on terror” boosted US Q3 GDP, we are already half way there. Not enough humor? The rest can be found here. Then again, maybe the joke’s on us, and the only thing that one can hope is “stimulated” are magazine sales. |
| How Will The Stock Market React To The End Of Quantitative Easing? Posted: 30 Oct 2014 10:30 AM PDT It is widely expected that the Federal Reserve is going to announce the end of quantitative easing this week. Will this represent a major turning point for the stock market? As you will see below, since 2008 stocks have risen dramatically throughout every stage of quantitative easing. But when the various phases of quantitative easing […] The post How Will The Stock Market React To The End Of Quantitative Easing? appeared first on Silver Doctors. |
| Don't trade more than you can afford to lose Posted: 30 Oct 2014 09:54 AM PDT Gold and mining stocks declined yesterday in a rather profound way. |
| Weekly Gold close setting up to be Important Posted: 30 Oct 2014 09:41 AM PDT In looking over this intermediate term chart, and surveying its current bear market, I have noticed that since its peak near $1900 some three years ago, the metal has only ONCE managed to CLOSE out the week BELOW $1200. See the arrow.....  The close this week will therefore be critical in determining whether or not we are going to be more downside follow through and another test of the key $1180 level or if we are going to sit and grind sideways for a while longer yet. Based on what I am seeing in the gold mining universe, I would say the odds favor a close below this level but I am not dogmatic about it. As noted yesterday in my comments on the gold shares, based on the ratio of the HUI to Gold, either gold remains OVERVALUED in relation to the shares or the shares remain undervalued in relation to the price of the metal. I still am leaning towards the metal remaining overvalued especially as there as of yet seems to be no sign that the bloodletting in that sector is through. There remains a lot of die-hard gold bugs who are enduring some tremendous paper losses in their mining share portfolios. Look at the HUI - it is mere about 10% away from hitting the 2008 low! That is six years of whatever gains anyone might have had in that sector that have gone up in smoke. What is such a tragedy is every single bit of it could have easily been avoided. All that was necessary was to tune out the assorted hucksters, charlatans, stock peddlers, etc and just read the chart.  I do think that if we get that weekly close below $1200, the bears are going to be emboldened to go after that triple bottom ( which rarely hold ) near $1180. There is a MOUNTAIN of sell stops sitting there. They know it and can smell them. |
| Posted: 30 Oct 2014 09:22 AM PDT |
| How China Bought 10,000 Tons of Gold Posted: 30 Oct 2014 09:00 AM PDT How exactly is it possible that China acquired 10,000 metric tons of Gold since 2011? 2015 Silver Perth Kookaburras 25th Anniversary Limited Edition! Submitted by Chris Hamilton: Since August '11 to August of '14, China has decreased its holdings of US Treasury debt by <-$9> Billion (according to the most recent […] The post How China Bought 10,000 Tons of Gold appeared first on Silver Doctors. |
| Silver Collapses to 56 Month Low Posted: 30 Oct 2014 08:49 AM PDT One look at this chart says it all.... If the metal cannot bounce from its current level, the next level of chart support does not show up until near $15.00  |
| Falling GLD Inventories - A Warning Sign Ignored by Gold Bulls Posted: 30 Oct 2014 08:41 AM PDT We have been painstakingly detailed in providing very regular updates and charts for the readers of this site of the reported holdings in the big gold ETF, GLD, for some time now. The reason for this is clear - like it or not, approve of the ETF or not, it is a proxy for Western-based investment demand for the yellow metal. The FACT is that reported holdings have been plummeting lower even since peaking out two years ago. Yesterday saw yet another reduction in those holdings with the total tonnage now at a measly 742 tons. I saw "measly" because the trust is now at reported levels last seen in the first week of October 2008! Let that sink in a bit.  As the holdings have dropped, so too has the gold price, right along with the share price of the gold miners. There is nothing mysterious about this. It has been there right in front of everyone's eyes who were open enough to recognize the obvious. What is so tragic about this is the number of innocent people who have lent their ear to the numerous peddlers of nonsense out there who assured them that this drop was ultimately bullish for the metal because, as they assured them, "the gold is being drained to go East". Whether it goes East, or North, or South or the earth's core, is irrelevant. It is being sold here in the West as money managers will not buy gold unless they see a very good chance of it moving sharply higher in price. It throws off no yield and therefore, any gains must come from capital appreciation. In an environment in which most commodities are falling in price, and one in which the Dollar is holding up fairly well, and one in which inflation fears are nowhere in sight, there is not enough Western-based investment interest in the metal to push the price higher. The East can buy all the gold that they want but without an accompanying demand surge in the West, the best the Eastern-based buying can do is to slow the descent of the metal or keep it from plunging even more sharply than it otherwise might have done. It takes hot money flows from the West to generate a bull market in gold, or in any other market for that matter and the simple truth is that those money flows are MIA when it comes to all things gold for the moment. Gold has fallen below chart support near $1210 and is now trading below psychological support at $1200. Once more it appears the bears want to go down and test that now triple bottom support at $1180 to see if they can crack it this time around.  Note ( this is for you Hubert!) gold did fall to the lower Bollinger Band after falling below the median line yesterday. The bands are widening out suggesting that there is more to come yet to this move lower. Also note that the ADX line is beginning to slightly rise hinting that a trending move is the works. I do want to point out however that the ADX is well below the 20 level at this point so unless $1180 is clearly taken out, the market is officially still in a broad range trade with $1180 the bottom of that range. If $1180 goes, look for $1150 in short order as a massive amount of hedge fund long positions will ALL BE UNDERWATER. With silver getting obliterated and with the mining shares disappearing from off the face of the earth, a lot of longs are in trouble. Maybe the bulls can stave off any further downside but they had better flex what is left of their dwindling muscle very soon. |
| Harvey Organ: Gold & Silver Whacked as QE Ends! Posted: 30 Oct 2014 08:00 AM PDT Gold & silver were whacked by the cartel in the access market today as Janet Yellen and the Fed announced QE will end at the end of the month. Expect gold and silver to be under the weather for the remainder of the week. Let's head immediately to see the major data points for today: […] The post Harvey Organ: Gold & Silver Whacked as QE Ends! appeared first on Silver Doctors. |
| Posted: 30 Oct 2014 08:00 AM PDT The last two months have brought confirmation that, as we long have suspected, GATA has outlined only a small part of the surreptitious market manipulation being undertaken by central banks — that this manipulation is actually comprehensive, that it covers nearly every major market in the world. The Last Coin in the Silver Shield Banksters […] The post The Crucial Questions Financial Journalism Won't Ask And Central Banks Won't Answer – New Orleans Investment Conference Presentation By GATA's Chris Powell appeared first on Silver Doctors. |
| Posted: 30 Oct 2014 07:42 AM PDT We are now tracking an updated count on gold, with completed wave 4) triangle at $1,346. The reason are even weaker prices last week that is approaching to 1980/82 level. |
| Marshall Swing on Coming Collapse: TPTB Want it (Gold & Silver) All! Posted: 30 Oct 2014 07:30 AM PDT We are in a bottom for sure. How long will it last is anybody's guess- but silver stackers need not worry. This is only a question of how much fiat can you raise in order to purchase hard core, hold in your hands bullion to hold for a couple of years through the greatest worldwide total […] The post Marshall Swing on Coming Collapse: TPTB Want it (Gold & Silver) All! appeared first on Silver Doctors. |
| Fabian Calvo: The End of the Petrodollar & Dismantling of OPEC Posted: 30 Oct 2014 07:00 AM PDT In this interview with Finance & Liberty’s Elijah Johnson, Fabian Calvo discusses 2 BIG WARNING SIGNS of an imminent global economic reset: The post Fabian Calvo: The End of the Petrodollar & Dismantling of OPEC appeared first on Silver Doctors. |
| Prosecutors Reopening Cases Against Bank Recidivists; Change or “Change You Can Believe in”? Posted: 30 Oct 2014 06:55 AM PDT The New York Times yesterday published a new story by Ben Protess and Jessica Silver-Greenberg on how Federal prosecutors are investigating reopening cases against big banks and hitting them with additional charges. Reader Richard D, who was curious about the story, wrote, "It is hard for me to know whether this is a momentous event, or a nothingburger." It's actually somewhere in the middle. While it represents prosecutors starting to use muscles that had atrophied, at least as far as financial firms are concerned, as readers will no doubt suspect, the shift falls well short of the levels of official zeal needed. But there's actually an important shift discussed at some length in the article that may have bigger ramifications: that powerful bank consultants and lawyers are no longer being taken at their word. |
| Metals market update for October 30 Posted: 30 Oct 2014 06:51 AM PDT Gold fell $17.40 or 1.42% to $1,211.20 per ounce yesterday and silver slid $0.14 or 0.81% to $17.07 per ounce. |
| Silver prices drops heavily alongside gold Posted: 30 Oct 2014 06:06 AM PDT Prices closed in New York at $17.07, down 18 cents, after yesterday's statements from the U.S. Fed. |
| Fed Ends QE? Greenspan Says Gold “Measurably” “Higher” In 5 Years Posted: 30 Oct 2014 06:02 AM PDT gold.ie |
| Fed Ends QE? Greenspan Says Gold “Measurably” “Higher” In 5 Years Posted: 30 Oct 2014 05:56 AM PDT Fed Ends QE? Greenspan Says Gold "Measurably" "Higher" In 5 Years
Question: "Where will the price of gold be in 5 years?"
Fed Ends QE? Greenspan Says Gold "Measurably" "Higher" In 5 Years As expected, the Fed announced yesterday it would end its six year money printing and bond buying programme. Given the fragile nature of the U.S. economy, Eurozone economy and indeed the global economy, Fed critics continue to believe that this may be a short term hiatus prior to a resumption of QE, if asset prices start to fall or economic growth falters.
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan admitted yesterday to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), that QE and the Fed's bond buying program, which aimed to lower unemployment and spur stronger economic growth, fell short of its goals. It has been a busy week for the man once known as “Maestro". The end of last week saw him engage in public discussions with the likes of Marc Faber and Peter Schiff at the New Orleans Investment Conference. Ominously, Greenspan warned at the New Orleans Investment Conference that the Fed's balance sheet is a "pile of tinder" and gold is a "good place to put money these days" as it will rise "measurably" in the next 5 years. He told the CFR that the bond buying program was ultimately a mixed bag. He said that the purchases of Treasury and mortgage backed securities did help lift asset prices and lower borrowing costs. But it didn't do much for the real economy. "Effective demand is dead in the water" and the effort to boost it via bond buying "has not worked," Greenspan said. Boosting asset prices, which aids the already wealthy, however, has been "a terrific success." When asked about QE, Greenspan made the unusually frank admission that "the Fed's balance sheet is a pile of tinder, but it hasn't been lit … inflation will eventually have to rise." Greenspan, who headed the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006 surprised guests in New Orleans when he stated bluntly, “I never said the central bank was Independent!” in response to criticism that the Fed was financing social programmes. This stunning admission, if true, begs the obvious question: to what extent are the current policies of the Fed and other central banks the result of careful reasoning by independent monetary experts and to what extent are they being dictated by politicians desperate for public popularity and reelection or worse still by unelected powerful banks and bankers? Greenspan said that currency debasement had failed to foster economic growth and unemployment had not been alleviated. However, at least asset prices had been boosted which he described as a “terrific success.” So Wall Street reaped tremendous benefits from QE while main street flounders and taxpayers, both living and yet to be born, have the privilege of footing the USD 4,000,000,000,000 bill – that is $4 trillion. He also indicated that ending QE would “unleash significant volatility in markets.” In New Orleans, he was asked why central banks still own gold. His answer was encouraging if a little vague, “Gold has always been accepted without reference to any other guarantee.” When asked where the price of gold was headed in the next five years he said “measurably" "higher.” Question: "Where will the price of gold be in 5 years?" He told the CFR that “gold is a good place to put money these days given it’s value as a currency outside of the policies conducted by governments.” So, the primary policy the Fed has – which is to put a floor under favoured markets and support U.S. bond and asset prices and give the process a complicated sounding title – has failed, according to the 'Maestro' who devised said policy. What happens next? We don’t know but for once we would be inclined to follow Mr. Greenspan’s advice. As we discussed last year, Mr. Greenspan is not the only person to have chaired a major central bank who views gold as a highly relevant strategic asset. Mario Draghi, head of the ECB and former governor of the Bank of Italy, has this to say: “Well you're also asking this to the former Governor of the Bank of Italy, and the Bank of Italy is the fourth largest owner of gold reserves in the world, which is out of all proportion to the size of the country. But I never thought it wise to sell it, because for central banks this is a reserve of safety, it's viewed by the country as such." "In the case of non-dollar countries it gives you a value-protection against fluctuations against the dollar, so there are several reasons, risk diversification and so on." The smart money continues to understand the importance of gold as diversification. Marc Faber, who also spoke at the New Orleans Investment conference, summed up our view perfectly when he suggested that each individual should be their own central banker, holding the reserve currency that is gold as insurance against government bungling. GOLDCORE MARKET UPDATE
Gold for Swiss storage or immediate delivery dropped 0.7% to $1,203.22 an ounce in late trading in London. The yellow metal hit $1,201.53 today, its lowest since October 6th. Gold for December delivery slid 1.8 % to $1,202.50 on the Comex in New York. Futures trading volume was 65% above the average for the past 100 days for this time of day, data compiled by Bloomberg show.
Gold fell on the expected Fed announcement and confirmation that the Fed is to end QE and their highly unorthodox money printing and six year monthly bond purchasing programme. If the mooted end of QE is bearish for gold and silver, then it is also equally bearish if not more so for overvalued stock and bond markets. Yet, those markets saw far less volatile trading and saw minor losses – the S&P closed down just 0.14%. The move lower yesterday also took place despite very high global coin and bar demand in recent days which would ordinarily have led to higher prices. It also comes at a time of heightened geopolitical and economic concerns and the emergence of the Ebola virus. Not to mention, the bullish "Save Our Swiss Gold" initiative. Is yesterday's trading another sign of manipulation? If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck … Gold is testing support at $1,200/oz and below that is support at the triple bottom at $1,180/oz. Get Breaking News and Updates on the Gold Market Here |
| Gold slides to 3-week low as dollar strengthens after Fed Posted: 30 Oct 2014 05:53 AM PDT The Fed ended its asset-purchase programme because of an improving labour market. |
| The London gold benchmark – a technical analyst’s view Posted: 30 Oct 2014 05:52 AM PDT Well-known technical analyst Ian McAvity sets out some points he would like to see built in to the new London gold benchmarking process. |
| Confused investors turn to the monthly ArabianMoney private-circulation newsletter Posted: 30 Oct 2014 02:03 AM PDT Confused as an investor? Take heart you are not alone. What about the followers of Dennis Gartman recently. He turned negative on stocks while they fell 10 per cent and then after a five per cent rebound decided that was wrong and went bullish. Are stocks going up or down? What’s a good long term strategy? Can you really have a strategy with the markets in the grip of day traders and central bankers? Then how about Jim Rickards’ new newsletter that offered up an Orwellian vision of the future as an opening shot (click here). Visionary thoughts Anybody reading this material can be forgiven for being confused. One of the wisest investors we know in Dubai told us this week that he could see nothing worth investing in and that cash in the form of US dollars was the only option. He did not even like bonds as a bubble likely to burst sometime soon without any warning. However, this is also a time to think about your portfolio and take action. That’s where our monthly ArabianMoney private-circulation newsletter can help (subscribe here). It pulls all the thoughts on this website together once a month and does its own investment analysis. The aim is to come to clear and concise conclusions about what investments to buy, if any at the moment. Its rising circulation is a testament to the obvious need for this sort of detached investment analysis from an Arabian perspective. Petrodollars Money has been flowing out of the Oil States and into global investments for many decades. Don’t you want to know what these investors are up to and how they see the world? Maybe they have an idea or two that you do not. Indeed, this sort of publication is worth its weight in gold if you can find one or two actionable pieces of investment advice each year that is important for your own portfolio. Flashes of insight may follow the smallest of relevations and ArabianMoney does pick up some very interesting tips as we put it together each month. Why not give it a try? Let this be your first investment in the Middle East and you might wind up as rich as an oil sheikh too. |
| Swiss gold referendum likely to pass and send prices higher says Julius Baer’s Burkhard Varnholt Posted: 29 Oct 2014 11:47 PM PDT Swiss private bank Julius Baer’s chief investment officer Burkhard Varnholt told ArabianMoney that the gold referendum in Switzerland is likely to pass and that will send gold prices much higher next year as the Swiss Central Bank will then have no alternative but to buy gold. ‘I will be voting against the gold referendum,’ he said before a seminar for clients in Dubai’ Royal Mirage Hotel today. ‘I am not against a gold standard but against tying the hands of the Swiss Central Bank and forcing them to buy an asset that they will not then be allowed to sell. Commodities bull ‘However, I think the referendum is likely to pass, and if a majority supports it then gold prices will go higher.’ Dr. Varnholt also argues that commodity prices in general are almost at a bottom and that a new bull market for oil is around the corner with ’substantially higher’ prices possible next year and a ‘certainty for 2016′. For US dollar investors – and that includes the dollar-pegged currencies of the GCC – Dr. Vanrholt recommends a 10-20 per cent gold holding in their portfolio for diversification and protection against renewed dollar weakness. ‘The end of QE means nothing,’ he said. ‘It is not going to happen. Loose monetary policy will continue keeping bond yields low for at least another five years. Dr. Varnholt is also ’super bullish’ on the outlook for the Gulf Oil States. ‘If any countries can deal with high oil prices it is the GCC and they are totally able to survive this,’ he said. ‘They have first mover advantage, the position between East and West for trade and transportation, business-friendly governments and a real estate supply that will lag behind demand right up until the 2020 Expo in Dubai.’ Incredible India Dr. Varnholt is also a China bull and thinks India under Prime Minister Modi will show it ‘really is incredible’. Not surprisingly then his equity allocation is biased towards emerging markets and those Western companies most deeply connected with them like Nestle and Unilever. On the eurozone believes long-term structural reform with the ‘liberalization of labour and taxation’ will eventually allow these countries to emerge from their current malaise and join a global economic upturn. In a recent meeting with the new Italian Prime Minister Dr. Varnholt noted that this was now moving up the political agenda. Equities, he argues, are in a long-term bull market that will only end ‘years from now’ when price-to-earning ratios are a lot higher than the are today. |
| Former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan says gold prices are going up ‘measurably’ Posted: 29 Oct 2014 11:12 PM PDT Former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan told the New Orleans Investment Conference last weekend that the gold price was going ‘higher’ over the next five years and when asked how much higher he responded ‘measurably’. Always a cryptic commentator Dr. Greenspan noted that ‘gold has always been accepted without reference to any other guarantee.’ In short it is money without a central bank to print it. Not independent? He also pointed to the fallacy for blaming central banks for money printing because actually they are all under the control of politicians, adding: ‘I never said the central bank is independent!’ Contrarian investor Marc Faber was on the same conference panel and has been highly critical of Dr. Greenspan in the past. When he bashed central banks for printing money to fund social programs, Mr. Greenspan put him down with the remark: “You have it the wrong way around’. In other words its the politicians making the social programs that the central bank is then told to fund. This is of course the democratic paradox: allow people to vote for a better life and they will do so until they create hyperinflation through excessive spending and borrowing. But why should gold go up from here after three years of falling prices? Could it be that politicians will once again tell the central bankers to print money to pay for their massive debts and inflate their value away? QE on hold? If so the ending of QE this week is just a hit on the ‘pause’ button that won’t last for long. Gold would be the most obvious beneficiary of such an inflationary policy and the dollar would resume its long-term decline. Then again if the bond market blows up in the faces of all the central bankers you would also want to hold gold and that would be the only place for money to go. It’s a good two-way bet and Dr. Greenspan has always like to stand on both sides of the coin at the same time. On the other hand, gold bugs might also consider his appalling investment prediction record and sell up! |
| Greenspan: “The Price of Gold Will Rise—Measurably” Posted: 29 Oct 2014 11:12 PM PDT "The Wednesday trading session turned out exactly as I expected" ¤ Yesterday In Gold & SilverThe gold price developed a slight positive bias early in Far East trading, topping out shortly after London opened on their Wednesday morning. From that point it drifted quietly lower, before getting sold down five bucks beginning at the Comex open in New York. Minutes before 2 p.m. EDT, the price was up about three bucks off its interim 8:50 a.m. EDT low---and at 2 p.m. on the dot, the "Buy the dollar index/hit the precious metals" button was pushed---and that was it for the day in all four precious metals, with gold [not surprisingly] getting hit the hardest. The gold price finished about three bucks and change off its 3:35 p.m. EDT low tick. The high and low were reported by the CME Group as $1,230.40 and $1,208.20 in the December contract. Gold finished the Wednesday trading session at $1,211.60 spot, down $16.20 from Tuesday's close. Net volume was 122,000 contracts, but considering the price action, that wasn't a lot---at least in my opinion. As usual, silver got hit the moment that trading began at 6 p.m. EDT in New York on Tuesday evening---and it didn't do a thing until the 8:20 a.m. Comex open. The subsequent rally attempt---and there were a number of them leading up until 2 p.m. EDT---all got dealt with in the usual manner. Then at that point, the HFT traders and their algorithms showed up---and "Bob's your uncle!" The high and lows were reported as $17.315 and $17.015 in the December contract. Silver closed yesterday at $17.09 spot, down 10.5 cents from Tuesday. Net volume was the same as Tuesday's at 28,000 contracts. Platinum didn't do a lot during the Wednesday session, but met the same fate at 2 p.m. EDT as both gold and silver---and was closed down 8 bucks. Palladium made numerous attempts to break above the $800 spot mark, but a willing seller was always at the ready to make sure it didn't happen. The metal also got hit at 2 p.m.---and was only allowed to close up 2 dollars. It would have obviously finished the trading session materially higher if allowed to do so. The dollar index closed late Tuesday afternoon in New York at 85.41. It traded virtually ruler flat until 9:15 a.m. EDT on Wednesday morning, before getting sold down to its 85.20 low at 10:30 a.m. EDT. Then shortly before 2 p.m. the index blasted higher as 'The Button' got pushed, with its 86.03 high tick coming about 2:45 p.m. in New York. It traded sideways after that, closing at 85.99, which was up 58 basis points on the day. The gold stocks opened down---and were in the hole to the tune of a bit more than 2 percent by around 11 a.m. in New York. From there they rallied back to unchanged by around 1:20 p.m. Then they got clubbed on the Fed news---and barely recovered off their lows going into the close. The HUI got creamed for 4.05%. Ditto for the silver equities. The managed to rally into positive territory off their 11 a.m. New York low, but really got hammered starting at 2 p.m., although they did recover off their absolute lows. Not that it mattered much, as Nick Laird's Intraday Silver Sentiment Index got bombed for a 4.21% loss. That's the third or fourth time this month that the shares have been hammered to the downside out of all proportion to the declines in the underlying metals themselves---and it's becoming obvious that these dramatic sell-offs don't involve free-market forces. The CME Daily Delivery Report showed that there were no deliveries to report, which is not surprising since I mentioned in this space yesterday that the October deliveries for both gold and silver were done. And barring any surprise deliveries in the next 48 hours, the October deliveries in gold were reported as 1,268 contracts---and in silver it was 774 contracts, which is very decent for what is not a 'normal' delivery month for silver. The CME Preliminary Report for the Wednesday trading session showed that there were zero contracts in either gold or silver still open in the October delivery month---and just eye-balling the remaining open interest for November in these two metals, it's apparent that the November will be pretty quiet on the delivery front as well. November, like October, is not normally a big delivery month for either gold or silver, but there's always room for a surprise. First Notice Day for the November deliveries is Friday---and whatever they show, I'll have them in Saturday's column. There was another withdrawal from GLD yesterday. This time an authorized participant took out 38,450 troy ounces. And as of 10:06 p.m. yesterday evening, there were no reported changes in SLV. There was no sales report from the U.S. Mint yesterday. There was very big in/out movement in both gold and silver at the Comex-approved depositories on Tuesday. In gold, there was 22,505 troy ounces reported received---and 89,183 troy ounces shipped out. The link to that activity is here. In silver, there was 934,767 troy ounces received---and 343,435 ounces shipped out the door for parts unknown. The link to that action is here. Here's a nifty chart that Nick Laird sent our way last night---along with his comment that stated---"Support has now become resistance." That's precisely right of course dear reader, but only if the Plunge Protection Team allows this chart pattern to stand. The 'click to enlarge' feature works wonders here. I don't have all that many stories for you today---and I hope there are at least a couple in here that interest you. ¤ Critical Reads Fed ends QE3 and sends upbeat signals on economyThe Federal Reserve voted on Wednesday to end its bond-buying stimulus program commonly known as QE3 and sent several upbeat signals to markets that it was not worried about global weakness, low inflation or a wobble in financial markets. In the statement, the Fed left unchanged its pledge that rates would remain near zero for a “considerable time.” But it qualified the statement, saying that if the economy improves faster than expected, than the first rate hike could come sooner than anticipated. The statement also made a major change to the Fed’s view on labor markets. Instead of seeing “significant underutilization” in the labor market, which was in the September statement, the Fed now said that underutilization in labor resources “is gradually diminishing.” This marketwatch.com article appeared on their website at 4:02 p.m. EDT yesterday---and today's first news item is courtesy of Casey Research's own Louis James.  Greenspan Sees Turmoil as Q.E. Boost to Markets UnwindsFormer Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said he doesn’t think the Fed can unwind years of extraordinary stimulus without causing turmoil in financial markets. “I don’t think it’s possible,” Greenspan said during an event today at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, responding to a question about the likely market impact of the Fed’s exit. While the Fed’s bond-buying program has been a “terrific success” in boosting asset prices, it hasn’t galvanized effective demand in the real economy, Greenspan said. This brief Bloomberg piece showed up on their Internet site at 8:35 a.m. Denver time yesterday morning---and I thank reader Ken Hurt for sharing it with us.  And the Biggest Beneficiary of QE3 was...Aside from the S&P 500 of course, which made billionaires out of millionaires (even if it failed to make billionaires into trillionaires this time around - we will have to wait for QE4 or QE5 for that), some may wonder: who was the biggest beneficiary of QE3? It certainly wasn't the U.S. middle class, which has seen its real wages decline in 6 of the past 7 months, and its disposable income is back at levels not seen since the mid-1990s. No, the biggest winner of QE3 is the same entity that we noted benefited the most from Q.E. over the past 6 years, and which even the WSJ realized was the primary beneficiary of the trillions in cash created out of thin air by the Fed, when in late September Hilsenrath wrote "Fed Rate Policies Aid Foreign Banks"... something we first said back in 2011 with "Exclusive: The Fed's $600 Billion Stealth Bailout Of Foreign Banks Continues At The Expense Of The Domestic Economy, Or Explaining Where All The QE2 Money Went." So yes, European banks: feel free to send your thank you cards to the Fed: without its $1.3 trillion cash injection who knows how many of you would have passed the ECB's "no deflation to model" most recent Stress Test. A word of warning: let's all hope that now, with some $1.5 trillion in Fed cash on foreign (most insolvent European) bank balance sheet, or just about half of all Q.E. liquidity injections since the start of QE1, European banks are finally solvent. Or else, deflation, inflation, stagflation, hyperinflation, or what have you, the Fed will be storming right back in to bail out This excellent article, along with two nifty charts, appeared on the Zero Hedge website at 3:18 p.m. EDT Wednesday afternoon. It's worth reading---and I thank reader U.D. for sending it.  David Stockman: Good Riddance to Q.E.— It Was Just Plain Financial FraudQE has finally come to an end, but public comprehension of the immense fraud it embodied has not even started. In round terms, this official counterfeiting spree amounted to $3.5 trillion— reflecting the difference between the Fed’s approximate $900 billion balance sheet when its “extraordinary policies” incepted at the time of the Lehman crisis and its $4.4 trillion of footings today. That’s a lot of something for nothing. It’s a grotesque amount of fraud. The scam embedded in this monumental balance sheet expansion involved nothing so arcane as the circuitous manner by which new central bank reserves supplied to the banking system impact the private credit creation process. As is now evident, new credits issued by the Fed can result in the expansion of private credit to the extent that the money multiplier is operating or simply generate excess reserves which cycle back to the New York Fed if, as in the present instance, it is not. But the fact that the new reserves generated during QE have cycled back to the Fed does not mitigate the fraud. The latter consists of the very act of buying these trillions of treasuries and GSE securities in the first place with fiat credits manufactured by the central bank. When the Fed does QE, its open market desk buys treasury notes and, in exchange, it simply deposits in dealer bank accounts new credits made out of thin air. As it happened, about $3.5 trillion of such fiat credits were conjured from nothing during the last 72 months. All of these bonds had permitted Washington to command the use of real economic resources. That is, to consume goods and services it obtained directly in the form of payrolls, contractor services, military tanks and ammo, etc and, indirectly, in the form of the basket of goods and services typically acquired by recipients of government transfer payments. Stated differently, the goods and services purchased via monetizing $3.5 trillion of government debt embodied a prior act of production and supply. But the central bank exchanged them for an act of nothing. This right-on-the-money commentary appeared on David's website yesterday sometime---and my thanks go out to Roy Stephens for finding it for us. West Virginia reader Elliot Simon sent this moneynews.com story on the same issue headlined "Financial Times: Q.E. Might Be a 'toxic legacy' Poisoning America". It's worth reading as well.  Jim Rickards: "Central bankers are impotent"Data coming out of the U.S. demonstrates lower mortgage yields and a surge in refinancings are adding to 4-year lows in gas prices to give consumers more disposable income. Jim says this isn’t as bullish as us what he thinks of the new data and also gives us his thoughts on divisions at the ECB. The preamble to this must watch interview begins at the 4:20 minute mark of Russia Today's "Boom Bust" program---and it runs for a bit over eight minutes. It was posted on the youtube.com Internet site on Monday sometime---and I thank reader Harold Jacobsen for bringing it to our attention. Mortgage Purchase Applications Plunge to 19-Year LowPresented with little comment...because realistically what is there to say about a so-called 'housing recovery' when the volume of applications for home purchases is the lowest since August 1995. Keep believing that lower rates will support home prices... keep believing the Fed's Q.E. worked... or face facts, this is not your mother's housing market any more. This short Zero Hedge story has three must see charts---and it was posted on their website at 11:03 a.m. EDT yesterday---and I thank reader 'David in California' for sending it along.  Economic, Political Discontent Make for a U.S. Midterm Double PunchA double punch of economic and political dissatisfaction marks public attitudes in the closing week of the 2014 midterm campaign – a dynamic that reflects poorly on the president’s performance, bolstering his Republican opponents. The discontent in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll is palpable. Despite its fitful gains, seven in 10 Americans rate the nation’s economy negatively and just 28 percent say it’s getting better. In a now-customary result, 68 percent say the country’s seriously off on the wrong track. There’s no respite politically. Six in 10 express little or no trust in the federal government to do what’s right. Fifty-three percent think its ability to deal with the country’s problems has worsened in the last few years; among likely voters that rises to 63 percent. Views of the president’s performance suffer in kind. Barack Obama’s job approval rating, 43 percent overall, is virtually unchanged from his career-low 40 percent two weeks ago. A steady 51 percent disapprove, essentially the same all year. His ratings on the economy – still the country’s prime concern, albeit one of many – are similarly weak, a 10-point net negative score. This article was posted on the abcnews.go.com Internet site at 7:00 a.m. EDT on Tuesday morning---and it's something I found in yesterday's edition of the King Report.  Tax evasion targeted in pact signed by 51 countriesFinance ministers and tax chiefs from 51 countries signed an agreement on Wednesday to automatically swap tax information beginning in 2017. Canada was not among the first 51 countries to agree to the effort to end tax evasion, but said it would be among 35 more countries joining the agreement in 2018. The first signatories will have to invest more over the next two years to prepare their tax departments. “We expect this will provide tax authorities across the world with the details of billions of pounds of assets held overseas,” U.K. Finance Minister George Osborne said as countries signed the agreement in Berlin. “Under the agreement a wide range of information will be exchanged on offshore accounts, including account balances, interest payments and beneficial ownership, and this will greatly increase the ability of governments to clamp down on tax evaders and to ensure that what they owe, they pay," he said. This article appeared on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation website at 3:41 p.m. EDT on Wednesday---and it's courtesy of reader 'h c'.  U.K. faces 'debt time bomb' from ageing populationBritain's ageing population has created a "debt time bomb" that can only be defused through a combination of significant spending cuts, faster increases in the state pension age and ending universal free healthcare, according to a respected think-tank. The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) warned that the Government would need to slash public spending by a quarter in order to get Britain's debt mountain down to sustainable levels. In a set of radical proposals, the IEA ca |
| Rosneft "Radical" Sanctions Retaliation Proposal Sends Russian Bonds, Currency Plunging Posted: 29 Oct 2014 11:12 PM PDT Rosneft "Radical" Sanctions Retaliation Proposal Sends Russian Bonds, Currency Plunging 10-year Russian bond yields have broken above 10%, trading at the highest yields since 2009 as the Ruble plunges once again to fresh record lows against the dollar. These significant moves come on the heels of two notable headlines overnight. First, German exports to Russia slumped 26.3% YoY in August (down a stunning 16.6% year-to-date with vehicle exports plunging 27.7%) as sanctions batter bilateral trade. Secondly, Rosneft has proposed what is being described as "radical" reactions to the West's sanctions, which the Kremlin has (for now) denied. This Zero Hedge piece was posted on their website at 10:06 a.m. yesterday morning---and it's the second offering of the day from reader 'David in California'. It's worth reading. |
| Hugo Salinas Price: The Fall in International Reserve Assets Posted: 29 Oct 2014 11:12 PM PDT  Hugo Salinas Price: The Fall in International Reserve Assets Something important has happened since August 15, this year. I have been following global central bank "international reserve assets" (excluding gold) as tallied by Bloomberg, for the past 18 years, and I have seen them increase steadily over the whole of that time. My source has been Doug Noland's "Credit Bubble Bulletin" over at www.prudentbear.com. In September of last year, I wrote an article, "The Stalling Growth of International Reserves" published on my website, www.plata.com.mx Now the quite extraordinary news is that International Reserve Assets are not just stalling, they are actually going into reverse. Of course repricing gold would fix the International Reserves situation at once, dear reader---and that may be in the cards at some point. This brief article put in an appearance on the plata.com.mx website yesterday---and I found it embedded in a GATA release. It's worth the 90 seconds of time it will take to read it. |
| Lawrence Williams: The new London gold ‘fix’ – the battle has commenced Posted: 29 Oct 2014 11:12 PM PDT  Lawrence Williams: The new London gold 'fix' – the battle has commenced By virtue of having already developed benchmark setting software for the other principally traded precious metals one might assume that the Thomson Reuters/CME and LME proposals might be the front runners. However from a purely competition aspect the prospect of the organisation which runs the principal US gold trading market in COMEX (the CME) also setting the London benchmark price smacks of an almost monopolistic opportunity which might stand against it – although it obviously didn’t in the case of silver. The selection of CME might also generate apoplectic opposition from the North American gold investment community, indeed from gold bugs everywhere, given that they see the CME’s COMEX market as being uncontrollably rigged by some major banks through the use of gold futures (utilising vast paper gold transactions, hugely in excess of the amounts of physical gold available) to control (manipulate) physical market pricing. This commentary by Lawrie appeared on the mineweb.com Internet site on Wednesday sometime---and I found it all by myself. |
| Greenspan: The Price of Gold Will Rise Posted: 29 Oct 2014 11:12 PM PDT Greenspan: The Price of Gold Will Rise Q: "Why do central banks (still) own gold?" Greenspan: “This is a fascinating question.” He did not answer the question, but he did point out: “Gold has always been accepted without reference to any other guarantee.” While Greenspan did not want to comment on current policy, he was willing to give a forecast on the price of gold, at least in a Greenspanesque way. Q: “Where will the price of gold be in 5 years?” Greenspan: “Higher.” Q: “How much?” Greenspan: “Measurably.” It's a safe bet, considering Greenspan's ability at understatement---"measurably" means it will rise by a lot. This commentary, which falls into the must read category, was posted on the merkinvestments.com Internet site on Wednesday---and the first reader through the door with the story was Ken Hurt. Zero Hedge put its own spin on this in an article headlined "Alan Greenspan: Q.E. Failed To Help The Economy, The Unwind Will Be Painful, "Buy Gold". Reader 'David in California' sent that one our way. |
| The Shadow Pyramid : Derivatives made easy Posted: 29 Oct 2014 11:00 PM PDT Gold University |
| Will the US bond market now collapse without all that buying by the Fed? Posted: 29 Oct 2014 08:03 PM PDT Did we just see the top of the US bond bubble and the 30 year bull market with the ending of QE by the Federal Reserve? Who is going to buy the national debt now? But the Fed is not without its allies for the moment. Investors can be forgiven for being confused. But that is also the general idea. Bond bears are probably now on solid ground. Then again banks have been scooping up bonds at the same rate as the the Fed, reports CNBC’s Kayla Tausche… |
| Dollar rises and euro and yen fall as QE becomes history so what next for global currencies? Posted: 29 Oct 2014 07:45 PM PDT Dollar assets are already paying the highest global interest rates, yields and dividends of any major economy so the prospect of higher interest rates after the ending of QE money printing yesterday makes the greenback an attractive buy. Expect more dollar strength to follow. Kathy Lien, BK Asset Management, provides currency plays on the Fed’s decision to end QE… |
| From This Day Forward, We Will Watch How The Stock Market Performs Without The Fed’s Monetary Heroin Posted: 29 Oct 2014 04:25 PM PDT
So why is the Federal Reserve finally ending quantitative easing? Well, officially the Fed says that it is because there has been so much improvement in the labor market...
But that is not true at all. The percentage of Americans that are working right now is about the same as it was during the depths of the last recession. Just check out this chart...
So there has been no "employment recovery" to speak of at all. And as I wrote about yesterday, the percentage of Americans that are homeowners has been steadily falling throughout the quantitative easing era...
So let's put the lie that quantitative easing helped the "real economy" to rest. It did no such thing. Instead, what QE did do was massively inflate stock prices. The following is an excerpt from a Wall Street Journal report about a speech that former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan made to the Council on Foreign Relations on Wednesday...
Moving forward, what did Greenspan tell the members of the Council on Foreign Relations that they should do with their money? This might surprise you...
Wow. It almost sounds like Greenspan has been reading the Economic Collapse Blog. Since November 2008, every time there has been an interruption in the Fed's quantitative easing program, the stock market has gone down substantially. Will that happen again this time? Well, the market is certainly primed for it. We are repeating so many of the very same patterns that we saw just prior to the last two financial crashes. For example, there have been three dramatic peaks in margin debt in the last twenty years. One of those peaks came early in the year 2000 just before the dotcom bubble burst. The second of those peaks came in the middle of 2007 just before the subprime mortgage meltdown happened. And the third of those peaks happened earlier this year. You can view a chart that shows these peaks very clearly right here. The Federal Reserve appears to be confident that the stock market will be okay without the monetary heroin that it has been supplying. We shall see. But it should be deeply troubling to all Americans that this unelected, unaccountable body of central bankers has far more power over our economy than anyone else does. During election season, our politicians get up and give speeches about what they will "do for the economy", but the truth is that they are essentially powerless compared to the immense power that the Federal Reserve wields. Just a few choice words from Janet Yellen can cause the financial markets to rise or fall dramatically. The same cannot be said of any U.S. Senator. We are told that monetary policy is "too important" to be exposed to politics. We are told that the independence of the Federal Reserve is "sacred" and must never be interfered with. I say that is a bunch of nonsense. No organization should have the power to print up trillions of dollars out of thin air and give it to their friends. The Federal Reserve is completely and totally out of control, and Congress needs to start exerting power over it. The first step is to get in there and do a comprehensive audit of the Fed's books. This is something that U.S. Senator Ted Cruz called for in a recent editorial for USA Today...
Whether you agree with Ted Cruz on other issues or not, this is one issue that all Americans should be able to agree on. If you study any of our major economic problems, usually you will find that the Federal Reserve is at the heart of that problem. So if we ever hope to solve the issues that are plaguing our economy, the Fed is going to need to be dealt with. Hopefully the American people will start to send more representatives to Washington D.C. that understand this. |
| Harvey Organ: Gold & Silver Whacked as QE Ends! Posted: 29 Oct 2014 04:15 PM PDT
Click here for Harvey Organ’s take on the end of QE & today’s Gold & Silver Smash: |
| Posted: 29 Oct 2014 12:35 PM PDT We’ve published a report covering our top 10 stocks to buy at the bottom. These are stocks we are planning to buy in the near future. This report is 15,000 words long and 35 pages. If you are an investor in the sector then you should strongly consider a subscription to our premium service. Here is some commentary that was part of the report: …..We are looking for a combination of quality and upside potential. In terms of quality we are looking for strong management, strong financials, strong projects (by margin and size) and growth potential. Its true that some lower quality companies could appreciate the most in 2015-2016 but that is far too speculative to pay attention to. We want the strongest companies with the highest odds of success and the most potential…. ……Producers are in a difficult spot and may lag in the early stages of the next bull market. Companies with large deposits that can make a lot of money at $1300 Gold will be at a premium. Majors and other potential acquirers are trying to survive the end of this bear market. When Gold bottoms and returns to $1300, the majors will be in a better financial position and only then will start acquiring. This Top 10 Report is a full 35 pages and 15,000 words long and is available with a subscription. Upon signup you will immediately receive all recent updates and important reports. Recently, we’ve published a Top 10 Stocks report, a Long-Term Precious Metals Outlook Report as well as a Global market update (with a new one coming). You won’t be disappointed with this material. Consider a subscription to our premium service as I believe we have one of the best services available. We are the only credentialed technical analyst who is the editor of a service. Secondly, we are one of only a few people who run a real money portfolio. That means our goals are 100% aligned with our subscribers. Weekly updates are sent on Saturdays while flash updates are sent when we make a trade. Reports are sent sporadically. The Daily Gold Premium information
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| “Retaliation”: The Feds have launched a new attack on Cliven Bundy Posted: 29 Oct 2014 12:28 PM PDT From Paul Joseph Watson at Infowars.com: A federal land grab being imposed under the guise of environmental protection in Southern Nevada has been labeled an act of “deliberate retaliation” by Cliven Bundy, the rancher who was at the center of a standoff between BLM agents and armed militia groups earlier this year. On Sunday, the Bundy family posted a Facebook entry which asserted that, “the federal government is mounting retaliations against the Bundy family and the Southern Nevada people,” after it was announced that the feds intended to designate around 1.8 million acres of land around their Gold Butte range as critical to the environment. The initial dispute between Bundy and the feds, which culminated in an armed standoff between BLM agents and Bundy supporters back in April, centered around more than $1 million in grazing fees which authorities claimed Bundy owed stretching back two decades. The Bundy family asserts that the new draft Resource Management Plan made public by the Bureau of Land Management would place up to 3 million acres of land off limits to recreational use, agriculture or ranching. “They’re trying to surround us by controlling all the land. People should know they’re doing this without the knowledge of the people who use it,” Carol Bundy told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Days after the standoff came to a head earlier this year, after which the feds were forced to release nearly 400 cattle belonging to Bundy, Nevada Senator Harry Reid labeled Bundy supporters “domestic terrorists” and indicated that the fight was not over. “From near the beginning of history, tyrannical men have sought to oppress through the control of land and resources. ‘Control the land and resources, and you have the power to control the people.’ There is a direct correlation to land and resources with power and wealth. All major powers in world history have gained their power & wealth by conquering the land and controlling the resources,” states the Bundy Facebook post, adding that Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACECs) “have been a tool used by the federal government to gain further control of large masses of western lands and the resources.” The BLM’s latest move to seize huge tracts of land surrounding Bundy’s property under the justification of environmental protection suggests that we could witness part two of the ‘Battle of Bunkerville’ sometime over the next few months. The comment period for the BLM’s new proposal ends on January 7th after a series of public meetings set to begin on Monday. Watch footage of April’s armed standoff between Bundy supporters and federal authorities below. |
| You won't believe what former Fed head Alan Greenspan is saying now Posted: 29 Oct 2014 12:00 PM PDT From Zero Hedge: It appears it is time for some Hillary-Clinton-esque backtracking and Liesman-esque translation of just what the former Federal Reserve Chief really meant. As The Wall Street Journal reports, the Fed chief from 1987 to 2006 says the Fed’s bond-buying program fell short of its goals, and had a lot more to add. Mr. Greenspan’s comments to the Council on Foreign Relations came as Fed officials were meeting in Washington, D.C., and expected to announce within hours an end to the bond purchases. He said the bond-buying program was ultimately a mixed bag. He said that the purchases of Treasury and mortgage-backed securities did help lift asset prices and lower borrowing costs. But it didn’t do much for the real economy. “Effective demand is dead in the water” and the effort to boost it via bond buying “has not worked,” said Mr. Greenspan. Boosting asset prices, however, has been “a terrific success.” … He observed that history shows central banks can only prick bubbles at great economic cost. “It’s only by bringing the economy down can you burst the bubble,” and that was a step he wasn’t willing to take while helming the Fed, he said. … The question of when officials should begin raising interest rates is “one of those questions I cannot answer,” Mr. Greenspan said. He also said, “I don’t think it’s possible” for the Fed to end its easy-money policies in a trouble-free manner… “Recent episodes in which Fed officials hinted at a shift toward higher interest rates have unleashed significant volatility in markets, so there is no reason to suspect that the actual process of boosting rates would be any different, Mr. Greenspan said. … “I think that real pressure is going to occur not by the initiation by the Federal Reserve, but by the markets themselves,” Mr. Greenspan he said. And finally, while CNBC’s audience is told what a terrible thing gold is, “The Maestro” − having personally created the financial cataclysm the world finds itself in following a lifetime of belief in fiat, Keynesian ideology and “fixing” one bubble with an even greater and more destructive asset bubble − has suddenly had an epiphany and now has a very different message from the one he preached during his decades as the head of the Fed. Mr. Greenspan said gold is a good place to put money these days given its value as a currency outside of the policies conducted by governments. What Greenspan failed to add is that it is thanks to his disastrous policies (subsequently adopted by Bernanke and Yellen) that gold is the “place to put money.” |
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