Gold World News Flash

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• China’s Master Gold Plan
• This Coal Mine Valued At $630 Million In 2011 Just Sold For One Dollar
• Gold And The Grave Dancers
• The Cyber Wars Begin: Obama Says US "Must Retaliate" Against China For Historic Data Breach
• 2016 Obama plans to take America Down
• 11 Red Flags As We Enter The Pivotal Month Of August 2015
• Did We Just Hit The Threshold For Short Covering In Gold?
• "Asia Crisis, Tech Bubble Burst, Lehman"... And Today
• Illuminati Preparations for September 22 28 2015 CERN and the Final Collapse
• Alert -- Bin Laden Family "Plane Crash" 3 Dead England Airport
• Incoming: Planet 7x with Gill Broussard
• Future of America : Tsunami, Martial Law and Great Revival Coming to America! - Patricia Green
• Is there a case for holding gold?
• Shanghai Gold Exchange Has 73.3 Tonnes of Bullion Withdrawn Its Third Largest Week

China’s Master Gold Plan Posted: 01 Aug 2015 09:00 PM PDT from clearasvodka: How much gold does China really have?

This Coal Mine Valued At $630 Million In 2011 Just Sold For One Dollar Posted: 01 Aug 2015 03:43 PM PDT The following photos are from Australia's Isaac Plains coking-coal mine.   Why is Isaac Plains relevant? Well, in 2011 at the height of the Australian mining boom, Japanese conglomerate Sumitomo thought it has spotted a bargain, and a SMH reports, it approached Tony Poli, the founder of mid-tier miner Aquila Resources with an offer: it would buy its 50% stake in Isaac Plains, at the time Aquila's only producing mine, for $430 million. Market participants thought Aquila's stake might fetch $300 million at best but Sumitomo was confident it would make a strong return, and offered almost 50% above fair value, especially since Brazil's legendary mining company Vale owned the other 50% stake. Net, the total value of the Isaac Plains mine in 2011 just just about $630 million. It turns out Sumitomo was very, very wrong, and within a few years the writing was on the wall. In September 2014, Sumitomo and Vale shuttered the mine citing the downturn in the international coal market. Sumitomo said it would also take a writedown worth ¥30 billion ($11 million) on its Australian coal investments. And as SMH tongue in cheekly adds, Isaac Plains was added to the long list of coal mines up for sale – but at a price. That price was finally revealed on Thursday: the princely sum of $1. Why the complete collapse in price of the mine? Simple: blame China. As Bloomberg explains, "a slump in the price of coking coal, used to make steel, to a decade low is forcing mines to close across the world and bankrupting some producers. Alpha Natural Resources Inc., the biggest U.S. producer, plans to file for bankruptcy protection in Virginia as soon as Monday, said three people with direct knowledge of the matter. It was valued at $7.3 billion in 2008." At the peak of the Chinese commodity bubble, which in turn resulted in a golden age for Australia's mining companies, production from Isaac Plains hit a peak output was 2.8 million tons a year, with coal sold to steelmakers in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. However, in the past year, with the bursting of the Chinese housing bubble, and the dramatic cooling off of China's shadow banking system, the commodity demand of Chinese ghost cities has gone on hiatus, and so has the production of mines such as Isaac Plains: Coal's demise is just part of a broader slump in commodity prices, which fell to the lowest in 13 years this month. The benchmark price for coking coal exported from Australia has slumped 24 percent this year to $85.40 a ton on Friday, according to prices from Steel Business Briefing. The quarterly benchmark price peaked at $330 a ton in 2011, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.   The closing of Isaac Plains and a second mine in Australia shut last year, Integra Coal, led to a 7.2 percent reduction in Vale's total coal output in the first half of 2015. It took a $343 million writedown on its Australian coal assets, part of total impairments of $1.15 billion last year, Vale said Feb. 26. Still, Vale's and Sumitomo's complete wipeout loss is someone else's gain, in this case the new owner of Isaac Plain, which acquired the assets for a nominal tip, and merely had to fun ongoing spending and any debt obligations. The new owners of Isaac Plains, Stanmore Coal, hope to restart production in the first half of 2016 and estimate the mine could operate for another three years. The market took notice when the news of the dramatic purchase hit: Stanmore remains a minnow with a market capitalization of just $30 million. But with its shares up nearly 70 per cent on Thursday, investors have taken to the deal. Still, as SMH adds, sluggish coking and thermal coal prices will continue to weigh heavily however regardless of how quickly they can restart production. Metallurgical coal has fallen another 25 per cent since January to about $US82 a tonne, from more than $US300 in 2011, while thermal coal has lost 8 per cent since January to languish around $US59 a tonne, compared to about $US150 three years ago. Then again, with Stanmore's cost basis virtually nil, it would be a fool not to take the discarded assets. As Kiril Sokoloff's 13D wrote recently, "Buy when they give it away. What are they giving away now?" and recount how in 1977, "we were walking uptown in New York City with a friend who worked for a prominent trust company. He told us that the trustees of an estate had just sold a triplex on East End Avenue for $1. The reason? The $3,000 per month maintenance was "depleting the assets of the estate". Last week, Glencore sold the Cosmos nickel mine for AU$24.5 million. In 2008, Xstrata Plc paid AU$3.1 billion for Jubilee Mines to gain control of Cosmos—the Perth-based company's flagship operation.   For what it's worth, Javier Blas tweeted this week that, based on data from Citi Research, 90% of all M&A that miners did since 2007 has been written off. Makes you wonder about the current M&A boom… All of which makes the researcher wonder if investors are missing the big picture: There is a giant infrastructure investment boom just getting started in Asia and along the Silk Road. Wasn't the whole commodity boom of the last decade based on infrastructure investment in China? Now, it will expand to all of Asia and beyond.   It is interesting to note how little is being written in the West about One Belt, One Road (see related themes). China Development Bank notes that the number of cross-border projects underway in the Silk Road effort already amount to $980 billion. Reportedly, Asia's infrastructure needs are close to $8 trillion by 2020. It remains to be seen if China can rebound, and if purchases such as Stanmore's $1 acquisition of a site that has a resource of 30 million metric tons will be lucrative. At current prices, every incremental ton produced loses money. But maybe prices will rebound. For now, however, one thing is certain - the biggest winner is not Stanmore despite its suddenly soaring stock price, but Tony Poli, the person who sold Issac Plains at the absolute top to the naive Japanese conglomerate: [Poli] could barely believe his luck when Sumitomo came knocking. Then in 2014 Aquila was acquired by Baosteel and Aurizon for an eye watering $1.4 billion.  It gave the two companies access to Aquila's West Pilbara iron ore project, but the timing could barely have been worse. Iron ore prices have slumped by more than half in the last 12 months leading to speculation Aurizon may be forced to eventually take a writedown on the value of the Aquila deal on its balance sheet. All of which is a very timely reminder: it is never an actual profit, until it has been booked. And as noted above, for 90% of all M&A deals in the past decade, the only thing booked is 100% losses.

Gold And The Grave Dancers Posted: 01 Aug 2015 03:00 PM PDT Submitted by Pater Tenebrarum via Acting-Man.com, The Asset They Love to Hate … Back in the 1960s, Alan Greenspan wrote a well-known essay that to this day is an essential read for anyone who wants to understand the present-day monetary and economic system (which is a kind of “fascism lite” type of statism, masquerading as capitalism) and especially the almost visceral hate etatistes harbor toward gold. Greenspan’s essay is entitled “Gold and Economic Freedom”, and as the title already suggests, the two are intimately connected.   Alan Greenspan in the mid 1970s – although he later turned out to be a sell-out, his understanding of economics undoubtedly dwarfed that of his successors at the Fed (and we are not just saying this based on the essay discussed here). Photo credit: Charles Kelly / AP Photo What makes Greenspan’s essay especially noteworthy is that it manages to present both theory and history in a concise, easy to understand manner. There isn’t a word in it we would change. At one point, Greenspan provides a brief history lesson. Yes, the (relatively) free banking era in the United States in the 19th century involved fractional reserve banking and as a result, there were frequent boom and bust cycles. However, since there was no “lender of last resort” with an unlimited money printing capacity, these business cycles were sharp and brief, and the market economy quickly righted itself every time: “A fully free banking system and fully consistent gold standard have not as yet been achieved. But prior to World War I, the banking system in the United States (and in most of the world) was based on gold and even though governments intervened occasionally, banking was more free than controlled. Periodically, as a result of overly rapid credit expansion, banks became loaned up to the limit of their gold reserves, interest rates rose sharply, new credit was cut off, and the economy went into a sharp, but short-lived recession. (Compared with the depressions of 1920 and 1932, the pre-World War I business declines were mild indeed.) It was limited gold reserves that stopped the unbalanced expansions of business activity, before they could develop into the post-World War I type of disaster. The readjustment periods were short and the economies quickly reestablished a sound basis to resume expansion.” (emphasis added) Alas, these relatively harmless business cycles provided interventionists with an opening to implement their central planning wet dreams, even though their ideas were based on what can charitably only be called appalling economic ignorance. This economic ignorance informs the monetary system to this day and we have nothing but contempt for these planners and their intellectual handmaidens. We cannot quantify it with any precision, but we believe it can be taken as a given that they have retarded economic progress by an order of magnitude, for reasons of compounding alone. Based on historical data, we would estimate that average real annual growth would have been at least twice as large since 1913 than it has actually been if the economy had remained free. Compounded over more than a century, this is basically the difference between what we have today and the universe of Star Trek.   US GNP per capita in the decades before the establishment of the Federal Reserve: equitable and strong growth, unmatched before and ever since – in spite of fairly frequent boom-bust cycles click to enlarge. As Greenspan notes: “But the process of cure was misdiagnosed as the disease: if shortage of bank reserves was causing a business decline — argued economic interventionists — why not find a way of supplying increased reserves to the banks so they never need be short! If banks can continue to loan money indefinitely — it was claimed — there need never be any slumps in business. And so the Federal Reserve System was organized in 1913.” (emphasis added) At the conclusion of his essay, Greenspan makes clear why the welfare/warfare statists just hate gold with a passion bordering on hysteria: “Under a gold standard, the amount of credit that an economy can support is determined by the economy’s tangible assets, since every credit instrument is ultimately a claim on some tangible asset. But government bonds are not backed by tangible wealth, only by the government’s promise to pay out of future tax revenues, and cannot easily be absorbed by the financial markets. A large volume of new government bonds can be sold to the public only at progressively higher interest rates. Thus, government deficit spending under a gold standard is severely limited. The abandonment of the gold standard made it possible for the welfare statists to use the banking system as a means to an unlimited expansion of credit.”   […]   In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold. If everyone decided, for example, to convert all his bank deposits to silver or copper or any other good, and thereafter declined to accept checks as payment for goods, bank deposits would lose their purchasing power and government-created bank credit would be worthless as a claim on goods. The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves.   This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists’ tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists’ antagonism toward the gold standard.” (emphasis added) This always was and remains true. Bought Off Intellectuals All the “justifications” for today’s system we hear from the supporters of the centrally planned fiat money dispensation are nothing but propaganda. This propaganda includes a number of historical lies (such as the old canard that “governments had no choice but to abandon the gold standard if they wanted to rescue the economy”), commingled with theoretical assertions that have been thoroughly refuted countless times. One of the latter is that an economy allegedly cannot grow unless the money supply grows as well (the truth is that any money supply is as good as any other, and in a free market prices would simply adjust). Another is that central banks need to be able to apply their “scientific monetary policy” to make up for the alleged deficiencies of the free market. In reality, central banking and fiat money have slowed real economic growth to a crawl and have produced boom-bust cycles of ever greater amplitude. Something like the “Great Depression” would never have been possible without a Federal Reserve and two heavily interventionist governments coming to power in a row (first Hoover’s and then FDR’s). The assertions listed above and similar ones are reiterated sotto voce by countless mainstream economists and the entire mainstream financial press at every opportunity. Hoever, this should be no surprise: The Federal Reserve has practically bought off the entire economics profession (incidentally, so have other central banks and assorted state-funded institutions). “The Federal Reserve, through its extensive network of consultants, visiting scholars, alumni and staff economists, so thoroughly dominates the field of economics that real criticism of the central bank has become a career liability for members of the profession   […]   One critical way the Fed exerts control on academic economists is through its relationships with the field’s gatekeepers. For instance, at the Journal of Monetary Economics, a must-publish venue for rising economists, more than half of the editorial board members are currently on the Fed payroll — and the rest have been in the past   […]   A Fed spokeswoman says that exact figures for the number of economists contracted with weren’t available. But, she says, the Federal Reserve spent $389.2 million in 2008 on “monetary and economic policy,” money spent on analysis, research, data gathering, and studies on market structure; $433 million is budgeted for 2009. That’s a lot of money for a relatively small number of economists. (emphasis added) In a free market, the market value of thousands of today’s hyper-specialized macroeconomists would be a tiny fraction of what they get paid by the State. In an unhampered free market economy, many of them would probably be forced to actually perform productive jobs. There would of course still be room for economists, but only the most committed and talented among them would could hope to receive funding. Absolutely no-one would bother paying for central planning advice or statist propaganda, that much is absolutely certain. Obviously these economists are highly unlikely to bite the hand that feeds them. As Hans-Hermann Hoppe has noted in this context: “There are almost no economists, philosophers, historians, or social theorists of rank employed privately by members of the natural elite. And those few of the old elite who remain and who might have purchased their services can no longer afford intellectuals financially. Instead, intellectuals are now typically public employees, even if they work for nominally private institutions or foundations. Almost completely protected from the vagaries of consumer demand (“tenured”), their number has dramatically increased and their compensation is on average far above their genuine market value. At the same time the quality of their intellectual output has constantly fallen.   What you will discover is mostly irrelevance and incomprehensibility. Worse, insofar as today’s intellectual output is at all relevant and comprehensible, it is viciously statist. There are exceptions, but if practically all intellectuals are employed in the multiple branches of the state, then it should hardly come as a surprise that most of their ever-more voluminous output will, either by commission or omission, be statist propaganda.” (emphasis added)   Economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe – a strongly committed enemy of the State, as the following quote illustrates: “[The State is] an institution run by gangs of murderers, plunderers, and thieves, surrounded by willing executioners, propagandists, sycophants, crooks, liars, clowns, charlatans, dupes and useful idiots – an institution that dirties and taints everything it touches”. Photo via libertarianin.org Given that intellectuals have great influence – the masses typically follow their lead, whether consciously or not – we shouldn’t be surprised that this “viciously statist propaganda” has become a hallmark of the mainstream press as well. This brings us back to the topic of gold. Premature Grave Dancing Readers may have noticed that there simply is no other asset that provokes more intense hatred in the mainstream press than gold. When the gold price declines as it has done since 2011, the press is literally brimming over with Schadenfreude, grave dancing exercises and anti-gold tirades. The lengthy preamble above is an attempt to explain why this is the case.   Intense grave dancing – the poor fellow at the bottom is Mr. Gold Engraving by Michael Wolgemut Simply put, gold is the one asset that provides the most reliable indictments of central economic planning and the abominable monetary and economic system that has been forced on us by the etatistes. In spite of its innumerable failures, socialism and its close cousin, modern-day corporatism (i.e., crony socialism), remains highly popular with the intellectual class, as it provides it with influence and money beyond its wildest dreams. Unfortunately, it is even more popular with big business. The handful of large corporations that are controlling the press these days are not exactly big fans of the free market and its unfettered competition either. Established big business organizations prefer to keep upstart competition suppressed by means of obtaining privileges from the State. One would think that business should be against the over-regulation that characterizes today’s bureaucratic Leviathan State. This is not the case: Since it harms small emerging competitors more than established businesses, they are actually in favor of it. Needless to say, the most powerful industry of modern times, the fractionally reserved banking cartel, is one of the biggest beneficiaries of the system and as such provides sheer unlimited funding to keep things right as they are. When gold’s fall accelerated recently, we have seen an outpouring of doom-saying and thinly disguised contempt in the mainstream press that actually puts everything seen before into the shade. In a way this is surprising; after all, gold is a completely unimportant asset, right? Just think about this for a moment. If another currency, such as e.g. the yen, suffers a big decline, is it subjected to even remotely comparable vitriol in the press? Here are a few examples from the last week or so (with a few comments by us interspersed): From Bloomberg (Bloomberg belongs to a limousine socialist, and is well-known for its pro-central banking/ pro-money printing and anti-gold editorial line. Some of the most ludicrous articles about gold ever published have appeared on Bloomberg): Gold Slump Not Over as Speculators Go Net-Short for First Time – apparently Bloomberg’s authors have yet to hear about contrarian signals.   Gold Is Only Going to Get Worse (“Our survey shows a majority of traders and investors aren’t optimistic”) – indeed, Bloomberg seems to be blissfully unaware of contrarian sentiment analysis.   Gold Could Fall to the $1,000 Mark (video)   Good Luck Bargain Hunting for Gold Miners – naturally, gold miners are even more doomed than gold itself…   From the Wall Street Journal: Let’s Get Real About Gold: It’s a Pet Rock – actually, as we have previously pointed out, it’s a door stop, not a pet rock. We should perhaps mention here what Jason Zweig, the author of this WSJ article, wrote in 2011 right at gold’s peak. From Mr. Zweig’s WSJ Article of September 17, 2011:   “Growing numbers of investing experts have been declaring that gold is a bubble: an insanely overvalued asset whose price is bound to burst. There is no basis for that opinion.”   With respect to gold miners (which since then are down by more than 80%) he opined:   “But there is one aspect of gold investing where it is possible to make rational estimates of value: the stocks of gold-mining companies. And, by historical standards, they seem cheap—based not on subjective forecasts of continuing fiscal apocalypse, but on objective measures of stock-market valuation.”   This is really a textbook example of how market sentiment works.   From Marketwatch: The carnage isn’t over in gold, other metals-mining stocks   Study predicts gold could plunge to $350 an ounce (i.e., here come the extreme predictions, the inverse of the vast bullish consensus and the extreme bullish predictions that were made at the peak by gold bulls)   And all of this was finally crowned with the following pronouncement in the Washington Post: Gold is doomed   Interestingly the author of this article, Matt O’Brian, actually gets one thing right, although his conclusion remains utterly wrong – he writes:   “When you think about it, a bet on gold is really a bet that the people in charge don’t know what they’re doing.”   That’s exactly what it is Mr. O’Brian. The wrong conclusion he comes to is this one:   ”But economists do, for the most part, know what they’re doing.”   Yes, in some parallel universe perhaps. That people can profess such beliefs after the twin debacles of the tech and housing bust and after yet another giant asset bubble has been blown by these “economists who know what they are doing” is truly stunning. How blind and naïve can one possibly be? This article is a good example of statist propaganda. Our wise leaders know what they are doing! How can anyone doubt it! Just to make this clear, we are not critical of people making bearish forecasts on gold. This is perfectly legitimate, especially as gold’s fundamental drivers have at best been stuck in “neutral” for much of the time over the past few years. Occasionally, gold&rsqu

The Cyber Wars Begin: Obama Says US "Must Retaliate" Against China For Historic Data Breach Posted: 01 Aug 2015 02:15 PM PDT On Friday, we highlighted a "secret" NSA map which purports to show every Chinese cyber attack on US targets over the past five years. "The prizes that China pilfered during its 'intrusions' included everything from specifications for hybrid cars to formulas for pharmaceutical products to details about U.S. military and civilian air traffic control systems," intelligence sources told NBC, who broke the story.  The release of the map marked the culmination of a cyber attack propaganda campaign which began with accusations that North Korea had attempted to sabotage Sony, reached peak absurdity when Penn State claimed Chinese spies had taken control of the campus engineering department, and turned serious when Washington blamed China for what was deemed "the largest theft of US government data ever." "Whether all of this is cause for the Pentagon to activate the 'offensive' component of its brand new cyber strategy remains to be seen," we said yesterday. As it turns out, the Office of Personnel Management breach will indeed be used to justify a cyber "retaliation"against China, because as The New York Times notes, "the hacking attack was so vast in scope and ambition that the usual practices for dealing with traditional espionage cases [do] not apply." Here's more: The Obama administration has determined that it must retaliate against China for the theft of the personal information of more than 20 million Americans from the databases of the Office of Personnel Management, but it is still struggling to decide what it can do without prompting an escalating cyberconflict.   The decision came after the administration concluded that the hacking attack was so vast in scope and ambition that the usual practices for dealing with traditional espionage cases did not apply.   But in a series of classified meetings, officials have struggled to choose among options that range from largely symbolic responses — for example, diplomatic protests or the ouster of known Chinese agents in the United States — to more significant actions that some officials fear could lead to an escalation of the hacking conflict between the two countries.   That does not mean a response will happen anytime soon — or be obvious when it does.  So the US will do something, it just doesn't yet know what or when or even if anyone will notice, but one thing is clear: "this aggression will not stand, man." The problem with "symbolic" responses is that they are merely, well, symbolic, and any real retaliation risks escalating the "cyberconflict." Then again, not doing anything also risks prompting an escalation: But over recent days, both James Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, and Adm. Michael S. Rogers, director of the National Security Agency and commander of the military's Cyber Command, have hinted at the internal debate by noting that unless the United States finds a way to respond to the attacks, they are bound to escalate.   Mr. Clapper predicted that the number and sophistication of hacking aimed at the United States would worsen "until such time as we create both the substance and psychology of deterrence."   This echoes the rhetoric from the DoD's "cyber strategy" released in April which says that "deterrence is partially a function of perception [and] works by convincing a potential adversary that it will suffer unacceptable costs if it conducts an attack on the United States."  For now at least, it looks like criminal charges are off the table.  The Justice Department is exploring legal action against Chinese individuals and organizations believed responsible for the personnel office theft, much as it did last summer when five officers of the People's Liberation Army, part of the Chinese military, were indicted on a charge of the theft of intellectual property from American companies. While Justice officials say that earlier action was a breakthrough, others characterize the punishment as only symbolic: Unless they visit the United States or a friendly nation, none of them are likely to ever see the inside of an American courtroom.   "Criminal charges appear to be unlikely in the case of the O.P.M. breach," a study of the Office of Personnel Management breach published by the Congressional Research Service two weeks ago concluded. "As a matter of policy, the United States has sought to distinguish between cyber intrusions to collect data for national security purposes — to which the United States deems counterintelligence to be an appropriate response — and cyber intrusions to steal data for commercial purposes, to which the United States deems a criminal justice response to be appropriate." Instead, the US may look to remove the so called "great firewall" which Beijing uses to censor content it considers to be subversive or otherwise objectionable. One of the most innovative actions discussed inside the intelligence agencies, according to two officials familiar with the debate, involves finding a way to breach the so-called great firewall, the complex network of censorship and control that the Chinese government keeps in place to suppress dissent inside the country. The idea would be to demonstrate to the Chinese leadership that the one thing they value most — keeping absolute control over the country's political dialogue — could be at risk if they do not moderate attacks on the United States. So perhaps there's a silver lining in all of this: China's 650 million internet users may, if only for a split second, be free to surf the web without the Politburo filter. Of course if the US really wanted to do some cyber damage, the Pentagon could hack into China's National Bureau of Statistics and see what the country's real GDP figure looks like, and if that doesn't teach them a lesson, maybe the best option would be to breach China Securities Finance Corporation and hit the "sell" button.  Finally, for those interested to monitor the global cyber war in real time, you can do so via Norsecorp by clicking on the following map.

2016 Obama plans to take America Down Posted: 01 Aug 2015 01:39 PM PDT Political commentator Dinesh D'Souza made some startling predictions about the second term of Barack Obama -- and now he has released a fresh, eight-minute addition to the film revealing how the president plans to "take America down a notch. The Financial Armageddon Economic Collapse... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit http://www.newsbooze.com or http://www.figanews.com for full links, other content, and more! ]]

11 Red Flags As We Enter The Pivotal Month Of August 2015 Posted: 01 Aug 2015 01:30 PM PDT Submitted by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog, Are you ready for what is coming in August?  All over America, economic, political and social tensions are building, and the next 30 days could turn out to be pivotal.  In July, we saw things start to turn.  As you will read about below, a major six year trendline for the S&P 500 was finally broken this month, Chinese stocks crashed, commodities crashed, and debt problems started erupting all over the planet.  I fully expect that this next month (August) will be a month of transition as we enter an extremely chaotic time in the fall and winter.  Things are unfolding in textbook fashion for another major global financial crisis in the months ahead, and yet most people refuse to see what is happening.  In their blind optimism, they want to believe that things will somehow be different this time.  Well, the coming months will definitely reveal who was right and who was wrong.  The following are 11 red flag events that just happened as we enter the pivotal month of August 2015… #1 Puerto Rico is going to default on a 58 million dollar debt payment that is due on Saturday.  Even though this has serious implications for the U.S. financial system, Barack Obama has said that there will be no bailout for “America’s Greece”. #2 As James Bailey has pointed out, the most important trendline for the S&P 500 has finally been broken after holding up for six years.  This is a critical technical signal that will likely motivate a significant number of investors to sell off their holdings in the weeks ahead. #3 The IMF is indicating that it will not take part in the new Greek debt deal.  As a result, the whole thing may completely fall apart… Leaked minutes of the fund’s latest board meeting, which took place on Wednesday, showed staff “cannot reach agreement at this stage” on whether to take part in the new €86bn (£60bn) bailout for Greece. The document said there were doubts over the capacity of the Athens Government to implement economic reforms, as well as the over the sustainability of the country’s sovereign debt pile, which is now projected to hit 200 percent of GDP.   The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, only sanctioned a new Greek deal earlier this month on the condition that the IMF takes part. #4 Italy is going down the exact same path as Greece, but Italy is going to be a much larger problem for Europe because it has a far, far larger economy.  This week, we learned that youth unemployment in Italy has reached a 38-year high of 44 percent, and Italy’s debt to GDP ratio has now hit 135 percent. #5 The Canadian economy has officially entered a new recession.  This is something that was not supposed to happen. #6 The price of oil plummeted close to 20 percent during the month of July.  It was the worst month for the price of oil that we have seen since October 2008, which just happened to be during the height of the last financial crisis. #7 Commodities just had their worst month in almost four years.  As I have written about previously, we witnessed a collapse in commodity prices just before the stock market crash of 2008 too. #8 Thanks to Barack Obama, the U.S. coal industry is imploding, and some of the largest coal producers in the entire country have just announced that they are declaring bankruptcy… On Thursday, Bloomberg reported that the biggest American producer of coking coal, Alpha Natural Resources, could file for bankruptcy as soon as Monday.   Competitor Walter Energy filed for bankruptcy earlier this month, and several others have done the same this year. #9 For the month of July, the Shanghai Composite Index was down 13.4 percent.  Despite unprecedented government intervention to prop up the market, it was the worst month for Chinese stocks since October 2009. #10 A major red flag that a recession in the United States is fast approaching is the fact that Exxon Mobile just announced their worst earnings for a single quarter since 2009.  Compared to the same time period one year ago, Exxon Mobile’s earnings were down 51 percent. #11 Chevron is another oil giant that has seen earnings plunge.  In the second quarter of this year, Chevron’s earnings were down an eye-popping 90 percent from a year ago. And in this list I didn’t even mention the economic chaos that is happening down in South America.  For full coverage of that, please see my previous article entitled “The South American Financial Crisis Of 2015“. To a certain extent, I can understand why most Americans are not alarmed about the months ahead.  The relative stability of the past several years has lulled most of us into a false sense of security, and the mainstream media is assuring everyone that everything is going to be just fine and that brighter days are ahead.  At this point, many believe that it is patently absurd to suggest that we could see an economic collapse in 2015.  But of course even though the signs were glaringly apparent, very few of us anticipated the financial crisis of 2008 either. A few weeks ago, I authored a piece entitled “The Last Days Of ‘Normal Life’ In America“, and I stand by every single word of that article.  I truly believe that the era of debt-fueled prosperity that we have been enjoying for so long is coming to an end, and our standard of living will never again get back to this level. Just yesterday, I had the chance to go over and stock up on some emergency supplies at a dollar store.  It always astounds me what you can still buy for a dollar.  The combined cost of raw materials, manufacturing, packaging, shipping and retailing most of these items shouldn’t be less than a dollar, but thanks to having the reserve currency of the world we are still able to go to these big box stores and fill up our carts with lots and lots of extremely inexpensive merchandise. Unfortunately, this massively inflated standard of living is going to come crashing to a halt.  This next financial crisis is going to destroy the system that is currently producing such comfortable lifestyles for the vast majority of us, and that will be an extremely painful experience. So enjoy this summer for as long as it lasts.  Even though August threatens to be pivotal, it is going to be nothing compared to what will follow. Fall and winter are coming. Prepare while there is still time to do so.

Did We Just Hit The Threshold For Short Covering In Gold? Posted: 01 Aug 2015 12:45 PM PDT Two weeks ago we noted something that has never happened before in gold - hedge funds, according to CFTC, had a net short position for the first in history. The past week saw a very surprising negligible shift of just 11 contracts as the short position shrank to 11,334 contracts. However, the aggregate net long position has dropped to a level that in the past has represented a threshold for signficant short-covering (21% and 17% rallies respectively). So with hedgies as short as they have ever been in history and aggregate positioning at a historically crucial level, one wonders if gold is due for a bounce...   Hedgies remain the most short they have ever been in gold...     This is what happened the last time gold saw a 'low' net long position...   and now, the aggregate net position in gold futures appears to have hit a threshold that in the past has created a significant short-covering rally...   The last 2 times aggregate net long positions were this low, gold rallied 21% and 17%... Did we just reach that short-covering threshold once again?

"Asia Crisis, Tech Bubble Burst, Lehman"... And Today Posted: 01 Aug 2015 11:23 AM PDT While over the past several months many have been focused - finally - on the bursting of China's 3 bubbles (credit, housing and investment), in the context of its 4th burst bubble, the stock market which the politburo is desperately trying to patch up every single day, a far scarier picture has emerged within the entire Emerging Market space, where Brazil has rapidly become a "ground zero" case study for what has moved beyond mere recession and is an accelerated collapse into economic depression, as we discussed previously. Bank of America notes overnight that "capitulation is already visible in bond/bank/FX correlations and "forced selling" of crowded EM growth trades." Here is what BofA's Michael Hartnett has to say about the EM capitulation/collapse phase: Despite muted asset returns, 2015 has seen the emergence of two big trends: the risk of a bubble in US health care & technology; and the crash in EM/Resources/Commodities.   The journey from hubris to humiliation in EM has taken roughly 5 years. Back in late 2010, when Sepp Blatter announced that Russia & Qatar would follow Brazil as hosts of the FIFA World Cup, both China & India were on course for >10% GDP growth, EM spreads were significantly lower, and the market cap of EM ($3.7 trillion on December 1st 2010) was twice the market cap of US banks, and exceeded the combined market cap of US tech & health care. Today, the market cap of EM equities is the same, while the combined market cap of US tech, health care and banks is over $10 trillion.   Note that the classic sign of crisis and capital flight, higher interest rates, falling currency, and falling bank stocks are now visible in Brazil (and elsewhere). Indeed, the correlation between Brazilian bond yields and Brazilian financials/BRL turned sharply negative during each of the past 3 systemic crises (Asia '98, Tech '02 & Lehman '08) and is doing so again today (Chart 3). In other words, while the S&P continues to exist in its own inert bubble, where stocks no longer are able to discount anything and merely float on the sea of $22 trillion in liquidity created by central banks, for Brazil, the correlation between key assets classes reveals that the local situation is on par with the three greatest crises of the past two decades: the Asia Crisis, the bursting of the Tech bubble, and of course, Lehman.   While it is naive to blame much of this on the strength of the US dollar, one thing is obvious, as BofA notes: "Structural inflection points in both EM/DM (Chart 6 & Table 3) have tended to coincide with major geopolitical events and/or policy shifts that have started or ended a multi-year move in the US dollar, e.g. Bretton Woods '70s, LatAm debt crisis '80s, Asia crisis '90s, Lehman 200.8" So for those who are seeking the inflection point in deciding how and whether to invest in EM, "asset allocation to EM awaits an "event" (e.g. Fed hikes, China deval, bankruptcy/ default) to create narrative of US$ peak & unambiguous EM value)." For the time being, the dominant narrative is that the US has a ways to go and will go even higher if and when the Fed starts its hiking cycle (even if riots break out among the BRIC nations which, like Brazil, are facing economic devastation). Unless, of course, the first rate hike is precisely the catalyst that ends the past year's dollar surge, as the market prices in the failure of the Fed's hiking cycle and begins trading in anticipation of the admission of such failure which will lead to an end of rate hikes once the US economy slides into all out recession (the plunge in globla trade is the biggest flashing red light in that regard) and corporate profitability moves beyond GAAP recession into all out depression, ultimately culminating with the launch of QE4 and monetary policy reverting back to square one.

Illuminati Preparations for September 22 28 2015 CERN and the Final Collapse Posted: 01 Aug 2015 10:30 AM PDT  Several recent clips of movies, commercials, and music videos appear to be depicting things like CERN, the "crossing" over of humans to another worldly race, and the September 22-28, 2015 dating. The Financial Armageddon Economic Collapse Blog tracks trends and forecasts , futurists... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit http://www.newsbooze.com or http://www.figanews.com for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Alert -- Bin Laden Family "Plane Crash" 3 Dead England Airport Posted: 01 Aug 2015 08:54 AM PDT  Three members of Osama Bin Laden family were killed in a plane crash in England The Financial Armageddon Economic Collapse Blog tracks trends and forecasts , futurists , visionaries , free investigative journalists , researchers , Whistelblowers , truthers and many more [[ This is a content summary only. Visit http://www.newsbooze.com or http://www.figanews.com for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Incoming: Planet 7x with Gill Broussard Posted: 01 Aug 2015 08:26 AM PDT  Episode 305 – Incoming: Planet 7x… We are taken along by Gill Broussard for a pictorial journey through the solar system for a glimpse at what may be in our near future. The Financial Armageddon Economic Collapse Blog tracks trends and forecasts , futurists , visionaries , free... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit http://www.newsbooze.com or http://www.figanews.com for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Future of America : Tsunami, Martial Law and Great Revival Coming to America! - Patricia Green Posted: 01 Aug 2015 07:08 AM PDT Stan interviews Prophet Patricia Green, who shares what God has revealed to her about the future of America. Air date: 2015-05-19 The Financial Armageddon Economic Collapse Blog tracks trends and forecasts , futurists , visionaries , free investigative journalists , researchers ,... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit http://www.newsbooze.com or http://www.figanews.com for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Is there a case for holding gold? Posted: 01 Aug 2015 04:00 AM PDT The gold price has fallen dramatically. Has the metal lost all claim to be a 'safe haven' investment? This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Shanghai Gold Exchange Has 73.3 Tonnes of Bullion Withdrawn Its Third Largest Week Posted: 31 Jul 2015 07:52 PM PDT

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