Gold World News Flash |
- Trump, Comex Gold Record Low & Silver Fix Breaks at LBMA
- Harry Dent: A Bold Warning – Financial Meltdown Imminent
- Agenda 2030 The Transhumanism Experiment
- "The BoJ's NIRP Will Result In More Currency Wars And Global Growth Slowdown"
- ANOTHER NAIL IN THE U.S. EMPIRE COFFIN: Collapse Of Shale Gas Production Has Begun
- Gold Deficits, Fort Knox, and a Reset
- The Silver Institute: 2016 Silver Market Trends
- Jeffrey P. Snider: F(r)actions of gold
- 5 Wall Street Banks Have Lost $219.7 Billion in Market Cap in 7 Months
- Silver Market In Disarray After Benchmark Price Fix Manipulation
- BoJ Adopts Negative Interest Rates, Fails To Increase QE
- IMF Wants To Impose A Wealth Tax To Pay Down The World Debt
- Americans Really, Really Hate The Government
- Crash: Fed Statement Causes Stock Market Tumble! Did Fed Make a Mistake?
- The Shemitah, The Debt Jubilee and Total Economic Collapse
- F(r)actions Of Gold
- Goldman Banker Who Set Up Slush Fund For Malaysian PM Takes "Personal Leave"
- Ted Butler: Troubling turnover in silver
- Gold Price Closed at $1,115.60, 2016 is Shaping Up to be a Great Year for Silver and Gold Prices
- Breaking the Spell: The Holocaust: Myth & Reality
- The Strange Case of 1MDB
- Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Pullback - Mostly Mozart
- Forget About “Stocks For The Long Run”
- ANOTHER NAIL IN U.S. EMPIRE COFFIN: Collapse Of Shale Gas Production Has Begun
- World War III - The New Axis of Evil
- What’s Fueling the Bear Market
- 2016 Will Be Far Worse Than 2008 - Jeff Berwick on The Real Money Show
- Research revives manipulation debate, suggests gold and silver collusion
- Ronan Manly: The gold vaults of London: Malca-Amit
- Fed Acknowledges Global Market Turmoil
- Alasdair Macleod: Surprises in store
- TF Metals Report: The LBMA strikes back
- 'Anti-arb compliance' sinks London silver 'fix' 6%, spot rallies straight back
- FOMC Dovish: Gold to Go Higher and Stocks to Bounce
- China's central bank may buy 215 tons of gold this year, Barclays forecasts
- The gold market just lost its best measure of Chinese demand
- Eric Hadik on Gold, Oil, and Stocks; Sees Accelerating Crash Cycles in 2016
| Trump, Comex Gold Record Low & Silver Fix Breaks at LBMA Posted: 29 Jan 2016 01:06 AM PST from CrushtheStreet: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Harry Dent: A Bold Warning – Financial Meltdown Imminent Posted: 29 Jan 2016 01:00 AM PST from The Alex Jones Channel: On today’s show, economic expert Harry Dent breaks down the floundering global market and what it portends for the US dollar. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Agenda 2030 The Transhumanism Experiment Posted: 29 Jan 2016 12:27 AM PST Robotification: The process by which tasks normally performed by humans are replaced with machines of some kind. These machines could be Bio-mechanical or electronic. Past tense: Robotified.............................. ...... The Financial Armageddon Economic Collapse Blog tracks... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit http://www.newsbooze.com or http://www.figanews.com for full links, other content, and more! ]]  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| "The BoJ's NIRP Will Result In More Currency Wars And Global Growth Slowdown" Posted: 29 Jan 2016 12:23 AM PST As reported previously the Bank of Japan, which not even the most optimistic central bank watchers had expected would unleash anything remotely as aggressive to prevent price discovery, stimulate asset prices and boost the exporting of deflation, became the latest central bank who, after a 5 to 4 vote, unleashed the monetary neutron bomb of Negative Interest Rates in the process pulling an anti-Draghi and shocking markets, even if admitting it can no longer boost QE due to previously discussed concerns it would run out of monetizable bonds in the very near future.
The initial market reaction was one of shocked surprise, with the Yen crashing and risk soaring, subsequently followed by disappointment that QE may be now be officially over and the BOJ will be stuck with negative rates, and then euphoria once again regaining the upper hand if only for the time being as yet another central banks does all it can to levitate asset prices at all costs, even if in the long run it means even more deflationary exports from all other banks and certainly China which will now have to retaliate against the devaluation of its "basket" of currencies. The BOJ's excuse was simple: everyone else is doing it: as Kuroda said quickly after the NIRP announcement, the BOJ's monetary policy is "just the same as central banks in the U.S. and Europe," and "doesn't target currencies." Well, it does target currencies, but he is right: it is the same as policy in Europe and the US, where as a reminder, NIRP is coming next. The Japanese government loved it, of course, since recent Japanese data has been ugly and getting worse, and since it allows Abe to punt all reform policies to the BOJ. Sure enough, moments ago Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga spoke to reporters in Tokyo. He said that the BOJ made the appropriate decision and that he welcomes BOJ's new method aimed at achieving 2% inflation target, adding that he "can sense the BOJ's strong determination." He said that a delay in hitting price target due to factors such as lower oil prices than expected. A full summary of the BOJ has done comes from Goldman which frankly was even more stunned today than after the BOJ's Halloween 2014 "Yen massacre"when Kuroda boosted QE. Here is what Goldman said:
Some other analyst reactions promptly pointed out the biggest flaw in the BOJ's action, namely the raising of doubts over policy viability: Izuru Kato, chief economist at Totan Research in Tokyo:
Satoshi Okagawa, global market analyst at Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. in Singapore:
Tsutomu Soma, general manager of fixed-income department at SBI Securities in Tokyo:
Masafumi Yamamoto, chief currency strategist at Mizuho Securites in Tokyo:
But the comment of the night came from Credit Agricole's Valentin Marinov who said, correctly, that the BOJ's easing is not supportive of risk because it will merely reinvigorates currency wars, in the process pushing the USD stronger and commodities weaker, forcing asset prices even lower. As a reminder this was DB's argument against more QE by the ECB as well. More importantly, since "almost 60% of the households' financial assets are held in deposits. If indeed, the Japanese banks pass on some of the costs from the BoJ's penalty rate to their depositors, this will result in a negative wealth effect, reducing the purchasing power of the Japanese consumers. Domestic demand should suffer and Japan's contribution to global growth could decrease further. The BoJ's measures thus should result in more currency wars and continuing slowdown in global trade and growth." Here is his full remark:
And now we await for the PBOC, whose hand has just been forced by the BOJ, to respond and devalue further in the process unleashing even greater, record capital outflows and even more market volatility. However, the best news in all of the above is that the BOJ's action takes the world one step closer to the full collapse of the central bank regime as with every incremental expansion of "emergency" policies, with every new "policy error", the monetary emperors demonstrate how naked and ultimately powerless they have been all along. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ANOTHER NAIL IN THE U.S. EMPIRE COFFIN: Collapse Of Shale Gas Production Has Begun Posted: 28 Jan 2016 10:00 PM PST SRSRocco Report | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Gold Deficits, Fort Knox, and a Reset Posted: 28 Jan 2016 09:40 PM PST by Gary Christenson, Deviant Investor:
Everyone knows that the U.S. officially holds a massive supply of gold in the Fort Knox Bullion Depository – about 147,000,000 ounces of gold. It hasn't been audited in 60+ years, but let's pretend it still exists.
To put the debt, deficits and craziness into perspective, compare debt and deficits to ounces of gold and to the gold officially vaulted in Fort Knox. First: Examine the official U.S. national debt (in $ millions) on a log scale since 1970. The exponential trend is evident. Note that the national debt has gone up from under $400 billion to nearly $19 Trillion – $19,000 Billion. Second: Take the INCREASE in the national debt each year and divide by the average price of gold that year. The graph shows the INCREASE in the national debt each year measured in gold ounces. Note that the average increase in the debt was about 710,000,000 ounces of gold EACH year since 1970. Third: Remember that Fort Knox officially contains 147,341,858 ounces of gold. Define that as one FKGU – one Fort Knox gold unit. Now show the above graph in FKGU's. How much did the US government increase its debt EACH year since 1970 by the equivalent value of all the gold in Fort Knox? Note that the average for EACH year since 1970 was about 4.8 FKGU. Repeat: The US government INCREASED the official national debt by the "value" of all the gold in Fort Knox about 4.8 times EACH year since 1970. Unsustainable! | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The Silver Institute: 2016 Silver Market Trends Posted: 28 Jan 2016 09:10 PM PST
(Washington D.C. – January 28, 2016) Silver is prized primarily for its dual role as a monetary asset as well as an important industrial metal utilized in a wide-range of existing and growing applications. Factors driving the silver market include supply and demand fundamentals, global economic performance, geopolitical issues, interest rates, currency fluctuations and investor sentiment, among others. Against this backdrop, the Silver Institute offers the following thoughts on this year’s silver market trends. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Jeffrey P. Snider: F(r)actions of gold Posted: 28 Jan 2016 08:49 PM PST 11:50p ET Thursday, January 28, 2016 Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: Zero Hedge tonight calls attention to commentary published this week by Jeffrey P. Snider, head of global investment research for Alhambra Investment Partners in Palmetto Bay, Florida, who argues that gold has been hypothecated and rehypothecated so much by central banks and investment banks, giving rise to a vast imaginary supply, because for several years now the monetary metal has been the only decent collateral left in a world economy creaking under the weight of contrived financial instruments that really aren't worth much at all. Snider seems to suspect that this racket is just about finished. His commentary is headlined "F(r)actions of Gold" and it's posted at the Alhambra Investment Partners Internet site here: http://www.alhambrapartners.com/2016/01/27/fractions-of-gold/ CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer ADVERTISEMENT Direct Ownership and Storage of Precious Metals Goldbroker.com is a precious metals investment company that enables investors to own and store gold directly in their own name (no mutualized ownership) in Zurich and Singapore. Goldbroker's clients are not exposed to any counterparty risks. They own gold and silver in their own names (the ownership certificate cites the name of the investor and serial number of his bars) and they have storage accounts opened in their own name as well. So Goldbroker.com's storage partner knows the exact identity of each investor. Goldbroker.com doesn't store in the name of its clients; rather, Goldbroker's clients store personally. All investors have direct access to their gold and silver bars. Goldbroker.com was launched in 2011 so that investors would avoid any counterparty risk when investing in physical gold and silver. Goldbroker.com is listed among GATA's recommended monetary metals dealers: To invest or learn more, please visit: Support GATA by purchasing DVDs of GATA's London conference in August 2011 or GATA's Dawson City conference in August 2006: http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html Or by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: To contribute to GATA, please visit: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 5 Wall Street Banks Have Lost $219.7 Billion in Market Cap in 7 Months Posted: 28 Jan 2016 08:20 PM PST by Pam Martens and Russ Martens, Wall Street on Parade:
Perhaps in an effort not to panic our sleeping Congress, or to further aggravate an already volatile stock market, the report said that "the United States financial system has continued to improve and threats to overall U.S. financial stability remain moderate." From there, it went on to eviscerate that calm assessment with an endless stream of hair-raising concerns. One of those concerns is the interconnectedness of big Wall Street banks – a matter the OFR released a detailed paper on last February. One fact you won't find in the OFR report is that five of the biggest banks on Wall Street, which are also interconnected with one another, have seen their market capitalizations melt away like snow cones in July. Citigroup, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs have cumulatively lost a total of $219.7 billion in market cap over the past seven months. All of the stocks are trading near their 12 month lows. The declines in market cap stack up as follows: Citigroup, down $60.74 billion; Bank of America, down $53.3 billion; JPMorgan Chase, down $47.7 billion; Morgan Stanley, down $30.3 billion; and Goldman Sachs, a decline of $27.7 billion. Not only are all of these Wall Street banks interconnected but they are also sitting with trillions of dollars of exposure to derivatives with the public in the dark as to whom the exposed counterparties are. Another growing worry is exactly how exposed some of these banks are to the crash in oil prices. (See the chart of Morgan Stanley's stock price above versus Brent crude oil. They have effectively been trading in a highly correlated manner.) To listen to the fourth quarter earnings calls of the biggest banks, and the amounts that they have reserved for losses in the energy sector, one would think that this oil price collapse has been a minor blip rather than an unprecedented collapse. Since 2014, the price of crude oil has lost over two-thirds of its value and corporate credit downgrades have escalated. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Silver Market In Disarray After Benchmark Price Fix Manipulation Posted: 28 Jan 2016 08:10 PM PST As Bulliondesk.com's Ian Walker reports, the silver market was thrown into disarray on Thursday after the LBMA Silver Price was set 84 cents below the spot and futures price this morning.
This is how the market reacted to this clear manipulation...
As we have detailed previously, the ‘fix’ or ‘benchmark’, as it is now known, is still the global benchmark reference price used by central banks, miners, refiners, jewellers and the surrounding financial industry to settle silver-based contracts. While some traders continue to use the 24-hourly traded spot price, larger players prefer the snapshot-style daily benchmark to settle bulkier contracts on a traditionally over-the-counter (OTC) market. The price is set every day by six participants – HSBC, JPMorgan Chase Bank, Mitsui & Co Precious Metals, The Bank of Nova Scotia, Toronto Dominion Bank and UBS – using a system run by CME and Thomson Reuters. CME and Thomson Reuters won the battle to provide the methodology and price platform for the daily process back in July 2014, replacing the 117-year old fix in August that year under sweeping reforms of the entire precious metals complex. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| BoJ Adopts Negative Interest Rates, Fails To Increase QE Posted: 28 Jan 2016 07:29 PM PST Well that did not last long. After initial exuberance over The BoJ's wishy-washy decision to adopt a 3-tiered rate policy including NIRP, markets have realized that without further asset purchases (which were maintained at the current pace), there is no ammo to lift stocks. An almost 200 point surge in Dow futures has been erased and Nikkei 225 has dropped 1000 points from its post BOJ highs... Dow futures have plunged...
What a mess...
And Nikkei has crashed over 1000 points...
And bond yields are collapsing...
The reaction is starting to sink in...
Of course the reality that is sinking in is that,. as Citi's Matt King noted, without an acceleration in direct reserves increases (i.e. moar QE) then net net this is a negative for the only indicator that matters to the world's financials - global net liquidty, which with EM reserves bleeding and The Fed on hold, China merely papering over the cracks with daily help, and ECB jawboning, means the world's last best hope - Kuorda-san - just let them down. We hope that after they see the following chart, which shows not only DM net liquidity injections (i.e., q-easing), but also EM net liquidity outflows (i.e., quantitative tightening) and which explains not only the recent selloff, but also shows how to trade global central bank and sovereign wealth fund and reserve manager flows, all confusion and denial will end.
* * * As Bloomberg reports, The Bank of Japan has surprised the markets in its first meeting of 2016, with a decision to shift interest rates into negative territory.
Key Points of Today’s Policy Decision (via The BoJ) The Introduction of "Quantitative and Qualitative Monetary Easing (QQE) with a Negative Interest Rate"
"QQE with a Negative Interest Rate" is designed to enable the Bank to pursue additional monetary easing in terms of three dimensions, combining a negative interest rate with quantity and quality.
Q1. Will the Bank continue to purchase Japanese government bonds (JGBs) after the introduction of a negative interest rate? A. Under "QQE with a Negative Interest Rate," the Bank will pursue monetary easing by making full use of possible measures in terms of three dimensions, combining quantity, quality, and interest rate. It will lower the short end of the yield curve by slashing its deposit rate on current accounts into negative territory and will exert further downward pressure on interest rates across the entire yield curve, in combination with large-scale purchases of JGBs. Q2. Will a negative interest rate make it difficult for the Bank to continue purchasing JGBs? A. The Bank can continue purchasing JGBs because costs of negative interest will be passed on to its purchasing prices of JGBs (or yields on JGBs purchased by the Bank) so that the prices will be higher (or the yields will be lower). The European Central Bank has been implementing a combination of its Asset Purchase Program and a negative deposit facility rate. The Bank will conduct JGB purchases while paying due attention to the impact of a negative interest rate on the JGB market. Q3. Will a negative interest rate cause a decrease in financial institutions’ earnings? A. When central banks aim at boosting the real economy through monetary easing measures, these measures can negatively affect the earnings of financial institutions which function as financial intermediaries. In deciding the introduction of a negative interest rate at the Monetary Policy Meeting held today, the Bank also decided to adopt a three-tier system in which a positive interest rate or a zero interest rate will be applied to current account balances up to certain thresholds in order to make sure that financial institutions’ functions as financial intermediaries would not be impaired due to undue decreases in financial institutions’ earnings. It should be noted that overcoming deflation as soon as possible and exiting from the low interest-rate environment lasting for two decades is essential for improving the business conditions for the financial industry. Q4. Will a negative interest rate be effective under the three-tier system, given that the negative rate will be applied partially? A. Transaction prices in financial markets (e.g. interest rates, stock prices, and exchange rates) are determined by marginal losses or gains made in a new transaction. Although a negative interest rate is not applied to the total outstanding balances of current accounts, costs incurred with an increase in the current account balance brought by a new transaction will be minus 0.1 percent if it is applied to a marginal increase in the current account balance. Interest rates and asset prices will be determined in financial markets based on that premise. Q5. How far into negative territory can the interest rate be moved? A. With regard to potential problems associated with negative interest rates, the following can be mentioned: (1) if the decrease in financial institutions’ earnings due to negative interest rates become sizable, it could impair their functions as financial intermediaries; and (2) if financial institutions reduce their outstanding balances of the central bank’s current accounts with which a negative interest rate is charged and significantly increase their cash holdings which yield zero interest, the effects of negative interest rates will be lessened. The Bank of Japan’s framework is designed to address these potential problems. With regard to (1), the Bank has adopted a three-tier system in order to mitigate a concern over undue impact on financial institutions’ earnings. With regard to (2), if a financial institution increases its cash holdings significantly, the Bank will deduct an increase in its cash holdings from the zero interest-rate tiers of current account balance. Thus, a negative interest rate will be charged on the increase in its cash holdings. Similar multiple-tier systems are adopted in countries where the size of negative interest rates is relatively large, including Switzerland (minus 0.75 percent), Sweden (minus 1.1 percent), and Denmark (minus 0.65 percent). Q6. Given that the interest rate on current accounts at the Bank becomes negative, don’t you think financial institutions will stop using the Fund-Provisioning Measure to Stimulate Bank Lending, the Fund-Provisioning Measure to Support Strengthening the Foundations for Economic Growth, and the Funds-Supplying Operation to Support Financial Institutions in Disaster Areas affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake? A. The Bank judges that these measures are playing an important role and it is not desirable that a negative interest rate on current accounts at the Bank would provide a disincentive for financial institutions to use these facilities. On this basis, the Bank decided to cut its lending rates for these facilities to zero percent and also to allow the amounts outstanding of the Bank’s provision of credit through these facilities to be included in the tier of current account balances to which a zero interest rate will be applied. Therefore, while the outstanding balances of current accounts which financial institutions hold at the Bank will increase due to the use of these facilities, these financial institutions will not incur a negative margin and thus will not be discouraged to use them. Q7. Please explain why the Bank will adjust the tiers of current account balances, to which a zero interest rate will be applied, at an appropriate timing. A. As the monetary base will grow at an annual pace of about 80 trillion yen in line with the Bank’s current guideline for money market operations, the outstanding balances of current accounts at the Bank will increase on an aggregate basis. In this situation, the Bank will accordingly increase the tiers of financial institutions’ balances of current accounts to which zero interest rates will be applied at an appropriate timing so that the balances to which a negative interest rate will be applied will remain at adequate levels. * * * As we explained earlier...while keeping asset purchases the same, The Bank of Japan confirmed the earlier leaked details that it will shift to a negative interest rate policy:
Clearly the decision was far from unanimous. Japanese stocks and USDJPY have exploded higher...
The adoption of NIRP enables The BoJ to break the bond market even further...
So The BoJ follows EU's route - because that has worked out so well for them!!
In other words - all excess reserves will cost you - so liquify the stock market with them! Dow futures are soaring on the collapse in Yen...
* * * As we detailed earlier, just minutes before The BoJ is due to release its statement, USDJPY and Nikkei 225 went haywire around 2220ET as Nikkei news dropped a headline about NIRP discussions taking place at The BoJ. This is not the BoJ statement but has sparked chaos in Japanese (and all carry trade linked markets). We can only assume this was some well-placed strawman for The BoJ statement enabling Kuroda to get a glimpse of what is possible. Total chaos broke out ahead of the BoJ Statement...as Nikkei News dropped this headline...
BOJ discusses introduction of negative interest rates today at policy meeting, Nikkei reports.
Nikkei 225 is up 500 points on the news, USDJPY +50 pips
Some context for that move...
Having given up all its gains since the last QQE update...
G622 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| IMF Wants To Impose A Wealth Tax To Pay Down The World Debt Posted: 28 Jan 2016 07:00 PM PST Initial jobless claims surge and the new trend is up. Pending home sales miss expectation as the housing market continues to fall apart. Home ownership remains near multi-decade lows. Caterpillar sales are worse than expected signalling a complete collapse of the economy. Baltic Dry Index... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit http://www.newsbooze.com or http://www.figanews.com for full links, other content, and more! ]]  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Americans Really, Really Hate The Government Posted: 28 Jan 2016 07:00 PM PST Submitted by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog, If there is one thing that Americans can agree on these days, it is the fact that most of us don’t like the government. CBS News has just released an article entitled “Americans hate the U.S. government more than ever“, and an average of recent surveys calculated by Real Clear Politics found that 63 percent of all Americans believe the country is heading in the wrong direction and only 28 percent of all Americans believe that the country is heading in the right direction. In just a few days the first real ballots of the 2016 election will be cast in Iowa, and up to this point the big story of this cycle has been the rise of “outsider” candidates that many of the pundits had assumed would never have a legitimate chance. Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders have all been beneficiaries of the overwhelming disgust that the American people feel regarding what has been going on in Washington. And it isn’t just Barack Obama or members of Congress that Americans are disgusted with. According to the CBS News article that I referenced above, our satisfaction with various federal agencies has fallen to an eight year low…
So if we are all so fed up with the way that things are running, it should be easy to fix right? Unfortunately, things are not so simple. In America today, we are more divided as a nation than ever. If you ask 100 different people how we should fix this country, you are going to get 100 very different answers. We no longer have a single shared set of values or principles that unites us, and therefore it is going to be nearly impossible for us to come together on specific solutions. You would think that the principles enshrined in the U.S. Constitution should be able to unite us, but sadly those days are long gone. In fact, the word “constitutionalist” has become almost synonymous with “terrorist” in our nation. If you go around calling yourself a “constitutionalist” in America today, there is a good chance that you will be dismissed as a radical right-wing wacko that probably needs to be locked up. The increasing division in our nation can be seen very clearly during this election season.
Now don’t get me wrong – I am certainly not suggesting that we need to meet in the middle. My point is that there is absolutely no national consensus about what we should do. On the far left, they want to take us into full-blown socialism. Those that support Donald Trump or Ted Cruz want to take us in a more conservative direction. But even among Republicans there are vast disagreements about how to fix this country. Establishment Republicans greatly dislike both Trump and Cruz, and they are quite determined to do whatever it takes to keep either of them from getting the nomination. The elite have grown very accustomed to anointing the nominee from each party every four years, and so the popularity of Trump and Cruz is making them quite uneasy this time around. The following comes from the New York Times…
The global elite gathered in Davos, Switzerland are also greatly displeased with Trump. Just check out some of the words that they are using to describe him…
The truth is that the Republican Party represents somewhere less than half the population in the United States, and today it is at war with itself. Supporters of Trump have a significantly different vision of the future than supporters of Cruz, and the establishment wing wants nothing to do with either candidate. A lot of people seem to assume that since Trump is leading in the polls that he will almost certainly get the nomination. That is not exactly a safe bet. It is my contention that the establishment will pull out every trick in the book to keep either him or Cruz from getting the nomination. And in order to lock up the nomination before the Republican convention, a candidate will need to have secured slightly more than 60 percent of all of the delegates during the caucuses and the primaries. The following is an excerpt from one of my previous articles in which I discussed the difficult delegate math that the Republican candidates are facing this time around…
If no candidate has more than 60 percent of the delegates by the end of the process, then it is quite likely that we will see the first true “brokered convention” in decades. If we do see a “brokered convention”, that would almost surely result in an establishment candidate coming away with the nomination. That list of names would include Bush, Rubio, Christie and Kasich. And if by some incredible miracle either Trump or Cruz does get the nomination, the elite will move heaven and earth to make sure that Hillary Clinton ends up in the White House. For decades, it has seemed like nothing ever really changes no matter which political party is in power, and that is exactly how the elite like it. Our two major political parties are really just two sides of the same coin, and they are both leading this nation right down the toilet. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Crash: Fed Statement Causes Stock Market Tumble! Did Fed Make a Mistake? Posted: 28 Jan 2016 06:30 PM PST Even the lies are getting more complicated. But they just can't hide the reality of an accelerating decline. The Financial Armageddon Economic Collapse Blog tracks trends and forecasts , futurists , visionaries , free investigative journalists , researchers , Whistelblowers ,... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit http://www.newsbooze.com or http://www.figanews.com for full links, other content, and more! ]]  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The Shemitah, The Debt Jubilee and Total Economic Collapse Posted: 28 Jan 2016 06:00 PM PST In this video Luke Rudkowski interviews the Dollar Vigilante Jeff Berwick about the current status of the World Economy and his predictions for total economic collapse. We go over the shemitah prediction Jeff made, how that developed and how we are in the debt Jubilee currently. A lot of... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit http://www.newsbooze.com or http://www.figanews.com for full links, other content, and more! ]]  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 28 Jan 2016 06:00 PM PST Submitted by Jeffrey Snider via Alhambra Investment Partners, The simple fact of the matter is that gold is no longer money and hasn’t been treated that way in decades. It is a frustrating and often woeful outcome, but deference isn’t a reason to color judgement. As an investment, which is more like what gold has become, it isn’t all that straight, either. Gold behaves in many circumstances erratically; often violently so. In 2008, gold crashed three times; but it also came back (and then some) three times. The metal remains stuck in some orthodox limbo of duality, sometimes acting an investment while at others, more rarely, as almost reclaiming its former status. The junction of that dyad format is wholesale collateral. It is a difficult and dense topic because it plumbs the very depths of the wholesale arrangement – factors like leasing, swaps and collateralized lending through binary bespoke arrangements. It is there that I think it helps to form the narrative, however, starting by reviewing what the BIS was up to in late 2009 and early 2010. I am going to borrow heavily from an article I wrote in April 2013 that describes the events in question but this is one of those times when you should read the whole thing.
In other words, “dollar” problems had been reborn despite QE1 and ZIRP (and the follow-on programs at the ECB, SNB and elsewhere) because European banks, in particular, had swapped “toxic” MBS collateral for “toxic” PIIGS sovereigns. Now, like MBS before it, even government bonds were becoming non-negotiable in repo (haircuts) and derivative collateral. Stuck not long after the last crisis, banks were in a tight spot since no central bank appeared ready to commit to another great effort so soon risking what they found a fragile but fruitful early revival. Banks then turned to the BIS in what only can be interpreted as great desperation for survivorship.
The reason that customers’ unallocated gold was such an “easy liquidity target” for banks in tight spots was that gold in that position had become a liability of the bank rather than being construed, as it should have under purely monetary terms, in constructive bailment. Unallocated gold was nothing more than another kind of deposit account; you didn’t actually own gold but possessed instead a financial claim on gold through the bank. Under bank liability, the bank may do what it wishes so long as it presumes meaningful care in being able to deliver any physical gold (not specific bars) upon convertibility. On December 7, 2011, the Financial Times reported that:
There were rumors (admittedly unsubstantiated to this day) that a large bank (or two) in France was to be declared insolvent on December 8; only a week earlier, on November 30, 2011, the Fed had announced a sudden alteration to its dollar swap lines with five reciprocating central banks, both reducing the cost (OIS +50 instead of OIS +100) but more intriguingly mentioning “temporary bilateral swap agreements so that liquidity can be provided in each jurisdiction in any of their currencies should market conditions so warrant.” Then on December 8, the ECB announced their trillion, the LTRO’s.
The relevance of this particularly unnoticed angle in the 2011 re-crisis is the behavior of gold since that point. As noted a few days ago, gold has only come lower as if to signal the “deflationary” impulse of the imploding eurodollar; and that makes sense as that particular time and flow of circumstances was in many ways convincing that there was never going to be a possible pathway to recreating or revisiting the pre-crisis financial system – as every central bank intended and still intends to this day. What we don’t know, probably can’t know, is how much gold was traded and where it all ended up during that time. In the more traditional setup of gold swaps, the practical effect was for producers to dislodge stored gold sitting in central bank vaults around the world. It was win-win for central banks because they got to both actualize gold into an interest-earning investment while also, through quite dubious accounting rules, never admitting that gold was gone (all activity contained under a single line item: gold and gold receivables; and you never knew how much was the latter and how little the former). The 2011 episode with the BIS reversed in many ways the causal flows of physical, assuming it was physical at all. Commercial banks that had been receiving customer deposits of the metal were now turning it over the central bank of central banks out of “dollar” (and euro, likely even euroeuro) desperation. While we can’t figure out where the physical gold ends up, we can at least recognize the fingerprints of the gold collateral/liquidity arrangement in various forms such as the stretching of claims on gold in “physical” markets such as COMEX; the more gold swaps churn physical or its approximates, the more opportunity there was to create “paper supply.” This is the hard part for those who appreciate real money, as money is itself an asset without liability. But here are banks and central banks abusing gold to turn it into just another agent of rehypothecation – further distorting capitalism’s foundational respect for property rights into more financial terms that obey no such constraint (MF Global being the institution caught at it). I wrote about this in May 2013, explaining why, in general, gold leasing in these kinds of situations is negative on gold price:
That would also hold for central bank claims in the prevailing leg of an earlier swap arrangement. Like rehypothecated treasury securities in repo, all that matters is balance sheet ledgers between counterparties agree on balance at the end of the day; each and every day. So long as that happens, there are no cascading triggers that reveal the fractioning. While my intent in revisiting the gold crash in 2013 was to add to the weight of financial warnings that have occurred almost regularly since then about the fate of the global “dollar” system, it was a ZeroHedge article from yesterday that brought it further into focus – particularly the current unknown (out)flow of physical metal that “somehow” left undisturbed the futures volume (the paper gold). From that article:
Is that the anguishing end of years of “dollar” liquidity being literally swapped for physical and paper gold? Much more so the latter? It is, of course, impossible to determine but there are so many corroborating factors that the suggestion is at the very least compelling; and thus why gold has been warning about the eurodollar system since 2013 and really 2011. The fact that gold had so much collateral appeal at that time speaks to that very notion; the artificial MBS “toxic waste” that stood for it during the ravenous runup to 2007 was no sustainable substitute for a small monetary system, let alone the global predicate for global finance and trade. Pre-2011 (Gold and Comex Cover were highly correlated)
Post-2011 (Gold and Comex Cover were almost perfectly anti-correlated)
[ZH: Something 'broke' in the gold complex when China devalued] To that fact, banks were forced throughout 2007-09 and again in 2011 (2013 too? How about 2015?) to alternate funding means no matter how distasteful (to the eurodollar practitioner, gold stands against all of it). Wholesale banking in its purest distillation is a system that seeks to fraction every kind of liability no matter original intent or even customer intent (banks are the central focus, where their balance sheet and financial resources stand as “money”) – to the point of fractions upon fractions; rehypothecations of rehypothecations. It went so badly that the system seems to have repurposed gold once more, the only asset where fractioning is still sensitive enough to signal the desperation. In other words, if the eurodollar and wholesale banking system had been sliced to such a thin margin again by 2011 so as to so heavily depend on the modern duality of gold, it not only would not survive it literally could not survive. The paper dilution we see now may just be that judgement finally seeking open admission. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Goldman Banker Who Set Up Slush Fund For Malaysian PM Takes "Personal Leave" Posted: 28 Jan 2016 05:35 PM PST On Tuesday we learned that Malaysian PM Najib Razak won't have too much explaining to do domestically when it comes to why Saudi Arabia decided in 2013 to make a $681 million "donation" to his personal bank account. Najib's political opponents have accused the PM of deliberately undermining an investigation into where the money came from. The public has also angrily asked for transparency and in August, street protests led by former PM Mahathir Mohamad were held in Kuala Lumpur. "I don't believe it is a donation," Mahathir said at the time. "I don't believe anybody would give [that much], whether an Arab, or anybody." No, probably not. In short, no one is buying Najib's story except, apparently, Malaysia's top prosecutor Attorney General Mohamed Apandi who ordered the probe into the transfer closed earlier this week. Like many other Malaysians, Mahathir has some questions for Apandi and Najib. Here are a few:
And some more:
All great questions. Questions which will likely never be answered. As those who have followed the 1MDB story will recall, the fund has strong ties to Goldman and more specifically to Tim Leissner, chairman of the bank's Southeast Asia ops. 1MDB was set up by Najib six years ago and has been the subject of intense scrutiny for borrowing $11 billion to fund questionable acquisitions. $6.5 billion of that debt came from three bond deals underwritten by Goldman and orchestrated by Leissner, who is married to hip hop mogul Russell Simmons' ex-wife Kimora Lee who, in turn, is good friends with Najib's controversial wife Rosmah Manso.
What Goldman did, apparently, is arrange for three private placements, one for $3 billion and two for $1.75 billion each back in 2013 and 2012, respectively. Goldman bought the bonds for its own book at 90 cents on the dollar with plans to sell them later at a profit. Now, just as Najib is cleared by Malaysia's top prosecutor and amid multiple 1MDB investigations unfolding in other countries, Tim Leissner is taking a leave of absence from Goldman and is leaving Singapore for Los Angeles. "Leissner, who has been with Goldman Sachs for almost 18 years and was most recently Singapore-based chairman of its Southeast Asia operations, remains an employee," Bloomberg reports. "The bank's dealings with the country's state-owned investment company, 1Malaysia Development Bhd., drew public scrutiny because of the high fees Goldman was paid." "His departure comes as Najib Razak, Malaysia's prime minister, fights to extricate himself from a donations scandal alleged to be linked to the investment fund, known as 1MDB," FT adds. "[Leissner's] close relationships with top officials in Kuala Lumpur produced what one executive described as a 'golden period' for the bank." The ubiquitous "people familiar with the matter" say Goldman was unhappy with the amount of time Leissner spent in Los Angeles where his wife is busy building a fashion business. Whether or not Leissner's leave and decision to high tail it out of Singapore has anything to do with the 1MDB scandal is an open question, but the timing certainly looks curious. Incidentally, Leissner will have plenty of places to stay in L.A. Najib's stepson and Jho Low (described as a "close family friend") own a $39 million mansion on Oriole Drive in the Hollywood Hills in Los Angeles, the L'Ermitage Hotel in Beverly Hills, a home in Beverly Hills known as the pyramid house for a gold pyramid in its garden, as well as other properties in the Los Angeles area. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Ted Butler: Troubling turnover in silver Posted: 28 Jan 2016 05:10 PM PST 8:09p ET Thursday, January 28, 2016 Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: Silver market analyst and market-rigging opponent Ted Butler writes tonight that he is "flabbergasted" by the recent enormous turnover of silver at warehouses associated with the New York Commodities Exchange. "The evidence in silver," Butler writes, "points to a growing physical tightness based upon the documented Comex physical turnover and visible inventories shrinking instead of growing. If that's not an invitation to buy and hold silver, then I don't know what is." Butler's commentary is headlined "Troubling Turnover" and it's posted at GoldSeek's companion site, SilverSeek, here: http://www.silverseek.com/commentary/troubling-turnover-15246 CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer ADVERTISEMENT Silver Coins and Rounds with Employee Pricing and Free Shipping Grab your Silver Starter Kit at cost from Money Metals Exchange, the company named "Precious Metals Dealer of the Year" by industry ratings group Bullion Directory. Simply go to MoneyMetals.com and type "GATA" in the radio box at the top of the page. This special silver offer contains 4 ounces of silver coins and rounds in the most popular 1-ounce, half-ounce, and 10th-ounce forms. Claim yours now, because GATA readers get employee pricing and free shipping. So go to -- -- and type "GATA" in the radio box at the top of the page. Support GATA by purchasing recordings of the proceedings of the 2014 New Orleans Investment Conference: https://jeffersoncompanies.com/landing/2014-av-powell Or by purchasing DVDs of GATA's London conference in August 2011 or GATA's Dawson City conference in August 2006: http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html Or by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: To contribute to GATA, please visit: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Gold Price Closed at $1,115.60, 2016 is Shaping Up to be a Great Year for Silver and Gold Prices Posted: 28 Jan 2016 04:47 PM PST
Both silver and GOLD PRICES are undergoing a correction of that last leg up that took silver from $13.73 to $14.59 and the gold price from $1071.1 to $1,138. This is routine action. The price of gold proved that with a test today of that old-high resistant at $1,113. Made a low at $1,110.20 and came right back. Possible to get a test back to $1,100, but I don't think so. If so, 'twill come tomorrow. Next week should be an upweek, or I'm all wrong about gold, a genuine possibility always.
2016 is shaping up to be a great year for silver and gold. Here are some news items I want to bring to y'all's attention: GERMANY is speeding up its Bring-Home-The-Gold program which since 2013 has repatriated about 366 tonnes. This year the Bundesbank moved 210 metric tons of Gold back to its Frankfurt vaults, 100 tonnes from Paris and about 100 tonnes from the New York Federal Reserve. LONDON SILVER FIX was resurrected a year ago August when most of the former price-fixers, under pressure from ongoing corruption investigations, bowed out. CME, which gobbled up all the commodity exchanges in the US, and Thomson Reuters got the contract from the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) to work the fix. The price is set daily by HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, Mitsui, Bank of Nova Scotia, Toronto Dominion Bank, and UBS -- the Usual Suspects. On 28 January 2016 the fix was set at $13.58, 84¢ (6%) BELOW market at that time ($14.42 in London and $14.415 on CME). One commodity strategist said this could be the end of the fix, thanks to the huge discrepancy. Par for unresponsive government and bloated corporations, the CME makes no apology or comment, but it is reported the matter is being "investigated internally." Stay tuned for further bogus explanation. This is screaming, unashamed highway robbery. The market NEVER traded down to $13.58; today's low was $14.07. These crooks just set the price 6% below market. Anybody who uses that silver fix ever again is crazy as a betsy bug. [Other expletives deleted] COMEX GOLD STOCKS are stored in Comex approved warehouse as "eligible," i.e., in the depository but not available for delivery against a futures contract, or "registered" i.e., "available for delivery to settle a futures contract." In a Zero Hedge article at http://bit.ly/1nB84HU we are told that on 25 January 201,345 oz of Registered gold was shifted by its owners request into Eligible, reducing Registered gold stocks from 275k to 74k oz. That makes the "coverage ratio" -- total gold claims divided by available stocks -- shoot up. 40 million oz of gold open interest is "backed" by a record low 74,000 oz of Registered gold, 542 oz paper claims to every physical oz. Sorry, but it ain't a problem till it's a problem. The vast majority of futures contracts are settled by buying the opposing paper contract, not taking physical delivery. That's what a futures market is for, hedging. Transitory changes like this may OR MAY NOT signify a physical shortage. If a shortage exists, futures will speedily show it in a "backwardation" -- the price of gold for immediate delivery (spot month) will rise above the normally higher priced future contracts. Preliminary last prices on Comex today show a very slight backwardation not with the spot months but from April at $1,113.50 to June at $1,112.9. August is trading normally at $1,120.60. So y'all don't panic just yet. Wait till Wednesday. I am taking a two day vacation with my surgery-recovering wife, Susan, to friends in deepest North Tennessee. Hence I won't be sending a commentary tomorrow. However, the scoreboard today pretty well tells the tale. Stocks, although they've traded much higher with triple digit days, couldn't keep any of those gains (sorry, Nice Government Men, y'all tried) as their bull transmogrifies into bear. US dollar index is weak and watered as Bourbon Street whiskey, about to fall, while silver and gold prices, accompanied by platinum and palladium prices, are working up through resistance. Stocks added 130.73, 0.82%, to 16,075.19, same place they've stopped before trying to catch a ride higher -- and failed. S&P gained 13.32 (0.71%) to 1,896.27. Stocks are staging the most lethargic rally possible. Yes, they will probably move a little higher, maybe to 16,600 and 1,950. Their day has passed. Y'all need to sell off stocks before you get caught in the generalized slaughter.
But, thunderation! Don't pay me no mind, I'm no more'n a nat'ral born durned fool from Tennessee no way. Y'all keep on lissenin' to them Wall Street smarties. They'll keep talking to you, long as you got money left. US dollar got hold of some bad, bad chili and is sick as the proverbial dog. Slid more today than yesterday, and plunged beneath the 20 and 50 day moving averages (98.99 and 98.88). Down 33 basis points (0.33%) to 98.62. Has fallen out of that rising wedge. No prophet needed to see 'twill fall further. Look for yourself: Euro -- brace yourself -- has actually broken out upward. Rose 0.44% to $1.0940, if it can keep it up. Yen fell 0.12% to 84.17. Y'all enjoy your weekend. Aurum et argentum comparenda sunt -- -- Gold and silver must be bought. - Franklin Sanders, The Moneychanger The-MoneyChanger.com © 2016, The Moneychanger. May not be republished in any form, including electronically, without our express permission. To avoid confusion, please remember that the comments above have a very short time horizon. Always invest with the primary trend. Gold's primary trend is up, targeting at least $3,130.00; silver's primary is up targeting 16:1 gold/silver ratio or $195.66; stocks' primary trend is down, targeting Dow under 2,900 and worth only one ounce of gold or 18 ounces of silver. or 18 ounces of silver. US $ and US$-denominated assets, primary trend down; real estate bubble has burst, primary trend down. WARNING AND DISCLAIMER. Be advised and warned: Do NOT use these commentaries to trade futures contracts. I don't intend them for that or write them with that short term trading outlook. I write them for long-term investors in physical metals. Take them as entertainment, but not as a timing service for futures. NOR do I recommend investing in gold or silver Exchange Trade Funds (ETFs). Those are NOT physical metal and I fear one day one or another may go up in smoke. Unless you can breathe smoke, stay away. Call me paranoid, but the surviving rabbit is wary of traps. NOR do I recommend trading futures options or other leveraged paper gold and silver products. These are not for the inexperienced. NOR do I recommend buying gold and silver on margin or with debt. What DO I recommend? Physical gold and silver coins and bars in your own hands. One final warning: NEVER insert a 747 Jumbo Jet up your nose. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Breaking the Spell: The Holocaust: Myth & Reality Posted: 28 Jan 2016 02:30 PM PST Nick Kollerstrom On The Myths And The Realities Of The Holocaust & The British Memorial Breaking the Spell: The Holocaust: Myth & Reality: Volume 31 (Holocaust Handbooks) - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Breaking-Spel... The Financial Armageddon Economic Collapse Blog tracks trends... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit http://www.newsbooze.com or http://www.figanews.com for full links, other content, and more! ]]  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Posted: 28 Jan 2016 02:04 PM PST This post The Strange Case of 1MDB appeared first on Daily Reckoning. On Dec. 1, 2015, I received the following urgent message from a friend in Malaysia: Dear James, I need to send a secure email to you on behalf of __________. I will not be using my usual email… To which email address should I send the message? You may have been informed that the government incarcerated me for six weeks… More on that in my message. Tq and God bless, __________. The news came as a shock. My friend Jong Lee [not his real name] had been thrown in jail by the repressive Najib regime in Malaysia. I quickly organized a separate encrypted communications channel so we could continue our dialogue. Of course, all message traffic is intercepted by U.S. and Malaysian intelligence services. But with the multiplicity of channels today, and military-grade encryption available to civilians, it is possible to maintain some privacy. One key is to switch channels frequently to stay "one step ahead" of intelligence intercepts. Fortunately Jong Lee is safe for the moment, but his actions are under constant scrutiny by Najib's henchmen. He could be arrested and interrogated again at any time. I was in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia during two separate visits in July and August 2015. While there I spent time with many of the most distinguished citizens of the country. They included former cabinet ministers, academics, central bankers and the billionaire heads of the leading firms in tin, rubber and palm oil — the leading resource exports of Malaysia. Those visits were my first acquaintance with Jong Lee. The highlight of my first visit was a small group celebration for the 90th birthday of Tun Mahathir Mohamad, the prime minister of Malaysia from 1981–2003. Mahathir is the single most important political figure in the history of Malaysia since its independence from the United Kingdom in 1957. Mahathir was in robust good health and cheerfully blew out the candles on his birthday cake. Jong Lee had been with us at Mahathir's birthday party. He was thrown in jail just weeks after I had last seen him. His crime? Peaceful, legal protest against one of the most corrupt regimes on earth led by the current prime minister, Najib Razak. As late as 2013, Malaysia was regarded as a model democratic success story with robust growth, a stable currency, ample hard currency reserves and a steady flow of foreign investment. Now, in 2016, Malaysia is a pariah. At least $2.4 billion of funds belonging to the people of Malaysia has been looted. The funds were looted from 1Malaysia Development Bhd. (or, "1MDB"), a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund. This looting was facilitated in part by Goldman Sachs, which raised some of the cash that was subsequently diverted. The administration of Prime Minister Najib is the target of four separate criminal investigations. The focus of those investigations are 1MDB transactions being conducted by authorities in Singapore, Switzerland, Abu Dhabi and the United States. At least $700 million of looted funds were deposited directly in Najib's personal bank account. This story of corruption by the Najib regime in Malaysia is a cautionary tale for investors in emerging markets generally, and Malaysia in particular. While aspects of the global emerging markets growth story may seem appealing; greed, corruption and venality are never far from the surface. Scandals can erupt at any time and quickly spillover into the larger political, economic and global arenas with unexpected consequences. Corruption risk is difficult to quantify — it's like an unseen snowflake that starts an avalanche. Yet, a financial avalanche should surprise no one. There is always a potential avalanche waiting for a single snowflake to bring the whole mountainside crashing down. The details of the Malaysian scandal have been widely reported by The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and local publications such as the Sarawak Report. Despite its mind-boggling complexity, the essential facts can be boiled down to a simple outline in plain English. Sovereign wealth funds are special purpose vehicles set up by countries to manage their hard currency reserve positions. They differ from normal reserve management by central banks in that sovereign wealth funds are allowed to invest in stocks, bonds, real estate and other alternative investments. Central banks are usually limited to short-term cash equivalents such as U.S. Treasury bills. Sovereign wealth funds exist all over the world and control trillions of dollars of investments. Most sovereign wealth funds are fairly transparent, conservative and well-managed. 1MDB was set up as the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund in September 2009, shortly after Najib became prime minister in April 2009. Najib was not only prime minister, but also named himself finance minister. By doing so he controlled Malaysia's politics and finances at the same time. The conflicts were obvious. Some protests were raised at the time, but no serious objections stood in Najib's way. In addition to Goldman Sachs, one of the facilitators of corruption at 1MDB is a shadowy figure called Jho Low. He is now in his mid-30s and originally from Malaysia. He went to school in London and attended Wharton before insinuating himself into the Najib inner circle in 2008. With control of billions of dollars in 1MDB, and Jho Low at his side, Najib got down to the serious business of looting the Malaysian people. In 2009, 1MDB invested $1 billion in a Saudi Arabian joint venture with PetroSaudi to launch energy projects. However, only $300 million was wired to the PetroSaudi account. The remaining $700 million was diverted to an offshore account controlled by Jho Low. 1MDB's auditors, Ernst & Young, were later fired for raising questions about transactions at PetroSaudi. In 2010, 1MDB sold its PetroSaudi stake for $2.32 billion and diverted the proceeds to a Cayman Islands fund. However, this and other PetroSaudi transactions consisted of paper transactions between affiliated entities designed to inflate profits while producing no cash. Meanwhile, the $700 million of actual cash from the original investment is still unaccounted for. Najib next approached Goldman bankers at the Davos World Economic Forum in Switzerland in January 2013. He said he needed $3 billion in a hurry. Goldman underwrote a $3 billion bond issue for 1MDB in March 2013. It earned almost $300 million in fees, about 10% of the bond issue. That's an extraordinarily large fee for a bond issue by a sovereign entity. Just days after the bond issue was complete $681 million was wired directly into Najib's personal bank account. The source of funds is unknown, although Najib claims it was a "gift" from an Arab friend. Through the maze of transactions 1MDB managed to incur $11 billion in debts while losing money on many of its investments. It is unclear if the fund is even solvent today. While discussing 1MDB with Mahathir, he asked if I had ever heard of a sovereign wealth fund borrowing money. I had done extensive research on sovereign wealth funds for the U.S. intelligence community over the years because of possible threats to U.S. national security. My answer was categorical. I had never seen a case of a sovereign wealth fund borrowing any money. Borrowing is antithetical to the whole idea of a sovereign wealth fund, which is to manage assets, not incur liabilities. The official corruption in Malaysia is pervasive. A former mistress of Najib was found murdered. The death was inflicted with military-grade explosives. The persistent rumor that I heard in Malaysia is that this murder was ordered by Najib's wife, Rosmah Mansor. If true, this presents the spectacle of the spouse of a prime minister intervening in the military chain-of-command to order the murder of an innocent civilian. Not since the days of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos (and before them, Juan and Evita Peron), has husband-and-wife corruption run so deep. Now the entire house of cards constructed by Najib and Jho Low is crumbling. Jho Low has disappeared (and is presumably in hiding). Many 1MDB and Najib-linked bank accounts have been frozen by authorities in Singapore, Switzerland and elsewhere. But Najib's response, rather than come clean, has been to double down with threats, firings and more cover ups. In rapid succession, Najib shut down local newspapers, fired his Deputy Prime Minister and replaced his Justice Minister. Certain individuals with direct knowledge of relevant facts have gone missing and are feared dead. The independence of investigations has been compromised through firings and intimidation. For now, there is little recourse for civil society in Malaysia. Najib remains firmly in control and struts around the world stage as host of ASEAN and other regional conferences in Kuala Lumpur. Najib also reminds locals of his close personal relationship with President Obama (the two played golf in Hawaii last year). Malaysia got a boost from being one of the founding members of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), an important free trade zone including the U.S., Japan, Canada, Chile and a number of East Asian countries (pointedly excluding China). TPP is the centerpiece of Obama's free-trade legacy, and he has pursued cordial relations with Najib as part of his effort to secure the deal. This entire turn of events is saddening. Malaysia is a potentially rich nation. In the short run, it is stuck in the so-called "middle-income trap" where per capita income has been lifted out of poverty, but seems stuck below the level of developed economies. The everyday Malaysians I met are friendly and easygoing. They are well-aware of the corruption, but powerless to change government in the short run (the next elections are not until 2018). Najib is not home free. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation is pursuing the case from a money laundering perspective. The FBI has clear jurisdiction because of the U.S. presence of Goldman Sachs, and the use of the U.S. dollar payments system to effect the looting. For investors, the lesson is clear. Malaysia is a "no go" zone for the foreseeable future. Huge investor losses were incurred there in 2015 not because the long-term fundamentals were bad (they aren't), but because the short-run politics are corrupt. Your worst enemy is not risk, which can be measured and managed, but uncertainty, which cannot. Political corruption and out-of-control greed emerging in an otherwise stable democracy make for a classic case of uncertainty. This uncertainty is not going away soon. All the best, Jim Rickards P.S. Be sure to sign up for The Daily Reckoning — a free and entertaining look at the world of finance and politics from every possible angle. The articles you find here on our website are only a snippet of what you receive in The Daily Reckoning email edition. Click here now to sign up for FREE to see what you're missing. The post The Strange Case of 1MDB appeared first on Daily Reckoning. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Pullback - Mostly Mozart Posted: 28 Jan 2016 01:34 PM PST | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Forget About “Stocks For The Long Run” Posted: 28 Jan 2016 01:27 PM PST This post Forget About “Stocks For The Long Run” appeared first on Daily Reckoning. BALTIMORE – After a year of wandering the globe, we are back in the homeland… and ready to turn in our passport. Travel can be fun. It can also be "broadening." But the most interesting thing about it is not so much what you find out about other places. It's what you discover about your home. You return to the land you once knew, as T.S. Eliot put it, and know it for the first time. So, we are ready to rediscover Baltimore – a place where children refer to handguns as "school supplies." And what's this? Judging by yesterday's mailbag, many of our dear readers are Sarah Palin fans. Several helped us decipher Ms. Palin's gnomic remarks about Donald Trump, which we covered inTuesday's Diary. Several more cancelled their subscriptions. They must have thought our admiration for the former Alaska governor was insincere. [For more Palin feedback, check out today's mailbag below.] No Shame in CashBut, let's move on… First, we return to questions put to us in Mumbai two days ago. "What should an investor do?" asked an old man in a Nehru jacket. "Should I stay in the stock market? After all, staying in the stock market always seems to pay off over the long term. Or should I move to gold and cash?" We have been telling people there is "no shame in staying in cash" until the market finds a bottom. If we're wrong and prices shoot upward, we will miss the upside. But the risk of missing substantial gains seems slight. Earnings are going down. Almost all the signals from industry and commerce seem to be pointing down, too. Meanwhile, U.S. stocks are still expensive. The CAPE ratio looks at the inflation-adjusted average of the previous 10 years of earnings relative to stock prices. On that basis, the S&P 500 has been a worse deal only three times in the last 100 years. Those were just before the 1929 Crash… the dot-com bust in 2000… and right before the 2008 meltdown – hardly auspicious precedents. Not only that, but also global debt levels are higher today than ever in history. Wouldn't it make sense to stay in cash… on the sidelines… until prices go down and debt issues are resolved? March to HellNot according to the newsletter writers at The Motley Fool. The Fool's Matthew Frankel gives us "three reasons you shouldn't worry about the stock market in 2016." "Don't panic," he goes on. The late Richard Russell, of Dow Theory Letters, taught us there are short cycles and long cycles. The long cycles are the ones that count. You can miss a rally now and then; it won't make much difference. But miss a major, long-term bull market, and you have missed an opportunity of a lifetime. On the other hand, riding through a major bear market can seem like a march to Hell. The worst thing that can happen, Russell used to say, is that you take a "ruinous loss" – one you can never recover from. Major market swings take time. The Dow reached a peak in 1929. It didn't regain that peak again until the late 1950s. Since then, we've cycled through booms and busts, reaching the latest top in 2015, when the Dow rose over 18,000. The questions to ask yourself: Where are we now? Have we passed the top? Are we in a long decline? Then there are the personal questions: How long will you live? When will you need the money? How much volatility can you withstand? Although top to top is a long time, it can also take a long time just to break even. The 1929 high was not reached again until 1956 – 27 years later. In Japan, they're still waiting to recover half the losses from the crash of 1989 – 26 years on. How would you feel about waiting until 2042 before we return to last year's high? No Mountain Left to ClimbThe other thing to realize is that the long-term performance of the stock market is mostly a myth. Yes, you could have made about 10% a year if you'd gotten in 100 years ago and stayed in. But that figure is subject to some important qualifications. First, you don't really make a steady 10% a year. That's just what you get when you go back and average out your annual gains over a century. It looks as though you have steadily marched up the mountain and now sit high and dry. But when you're at the top, the only way to go is down! Do the math again when you get to the bottom. You will find your average rate of return looks awful. Second, who lives long enough to make it work? Compounding is great in theory. But it only works its magic at the end. Compound a penny at a 100% a year – from one to two… two to four… four to eight, etc. – and at the end of 10 years, you have just $10.24. Compound $1,000 at 10% a year, and after 10 years, you have $2,593. Not bad. But hardly the sort of stuff dreams are made of. And that assumes that you get 10% a year. At today's prices, stocks are already so high, there's not much mountain left to climb. Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Shiller estimates the average annual return on U.S. stocks the next 10 years at only 3%. Vanguard Group founder Jack Bogle puts it at a little more than 1%. And Rob Arnott at Research Affiliates looks for a return of less than 1%. At those levels, you can forget about the magic of compounding. Whacked by the Big BearThen, you have to worry about those drawdowns – the peak-to-trough losses you experience in your portfolio. If you compound at a rate of 10% a year but have a 40% drawdown in year three, you have to go for another three years just to get back where you started. Worse, your lifetime of savings and investing gets whacked by a big bear market. You take the "ruinous loss" Russell warned about, with no time to recover. Most investors don't have enough time to make compounding work as advertised. Most are already over 50 when they begin investing. They don't have 100 years. They're lucky if they have 15 or 20. Over that kind of time frame, if there are any substantial setbacks, they're finished. That's why it's so important to get in when the market is low. Then double-digit gains, compounded over many years, can at least be a theoretical possibility. But if we're right about where the economy is… how expensive the stock market is… and how difficult it will be to sustain further gains, then this is probably not the best time to begin a program of retirement financing via stocks. On our scales, the balance between risk and reward in U.S. stocks falls heavily toward the risk. We see a reasonable likelihood of a ruinous loss against a remote possibility of a big gain. So go ahead and panic. You may be glad you did. Regards, Bill Bonner Originally posted at Bill Bonner's Diary, right here. P.S. Bill expects a violent monetary shock, in which the dollar — the physical, paper dollar — disappears. And he believes it will be foreshadowed by something even rarer and more unexpected — the disappearance of cash dollars. Many Americans don't see this coming because of what psychologists call "willful blindness." But Bill has taken the extraordinary step of assembling the full shocking details in a special report. To get full details on what Bill calls the "Great American Credit Collapse", click here right now. The post Forget About “Stocks For The Long Run” appeared first on Daily Reckoning. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ANOTHER NAIL IN U.S. EMPIRE COFFIN: Collapse Of Shale Gas Production Has Begun Posted: 28 Jan 2016 01:22 PM PST SRSRocco Report | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| World War III - The New Axis of Evil Posted: 28 Jan 2016 12:08 PM PST The alliances and proxies of the Syrian Front explained. World War III - The New Axis of Evil 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! ]]  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| What’s Fueling the Bear Market Posted: 28 Jan 2016 12:03 PM PST This post What’s Fueling the Bear Market appeared first on Daily Reckoning. The media is very focused on China, and that’s because the strategists and the economists in the US and the media of course cannot accept the fact that they completely mis-predicted economic activity in the US and so they have to blame something else for the decline in the stock market. Luckily, they’ve now found China. In fact, yes, China has numerous problems but they should not overlook that China has also been the contributing factor to growth post the financial crisis in 2008. We have now this adjustment in China on the downside but if you buy US stocks, domestic shares, what do they have to do with China? Nothing at all. The multinationals have something to do with China but actually, the business in China for the multinationals is not a disaster. It’s actually much better than in the US. So to blame China for all the decline is misplaced, in my opinion. Not that I’m bullish on China. As I mentioned, and I’ve written about this numerous times for two years now, it’s very clear that for the last two years the Chinese economy was de-accelerating very badly. That is crystal clear. But the bullish fund management industry and the strategies that the economists and of course the banks that do business in China, they don’t want to write anything negative about China, because that could impact their business. So of course they joined the cheerleaders, insisting that everything is fine. As far as where China will go from here, nobody knows precisely where it will go. In my view, it will continue to deteriorate and possibly badly. On the other hand, the longer-term outlook is still rather favorable. It’s just that in an expansion or in a long-term rise of a country you can have huge setbacks. I’ve lived in Asia since 1973. We had the ’73/’74 recession, the Hong Kong Stock Market went down 90%. We had in ’81/’82 a recession and markets sold off, property markets sold off. Then in the crash in ’87 the Hong Kong Share Market was closed for four days after it had declined by 50% in one day. Then we had the peak in Japan in 1990 from where the market went down 70% and so forth and so on. Then we had the Asian crisis and we had a bear market in 2003 and again the bear market in 2009 but Asia continued to grow. I think the growth will now slow down, but Asia’s a big region, as is China. So you can have, like in the US, maybe one state is contracting like in the mid-’90s we had a property crash in California but the other states were still expanding. We can have some sectors in China, like steel and copper and heavy industries that are all contracting. On the other hand, there may be other sectors that are still expanding. As far as getting real, valid news on China and Asia, there’s a lot of research out there but some of it is quite expensive so it’s unsuitable for individuals. John Anderson of Emerging Market Advisers writes regularly about China. Then we have also banks that write regularly about China statistically. What they publish is probably correct except the GDP figures are not correct but the rest is probably correct. Jim Walker also has the Asianomics service that is very good about China and Asia in general. There are a lot of sources. As far as a Chinese recovery, and whether or not world trading and market averages become more buoyant, and whether or not Chinese weakness is the proximate cause of problems worldwide, I’m not sure. But I think it’s not like we will recover any time soon. I think the news out of China will not improve much. I rather think that what could result is a bear market rally that can be quite powerful because we’re very oversold. Last Friday [Jan. 15] we had I think 900 daily new 12-month lows. This is indicative of an extremely, extremely oversold condition. But the oversold condition follows a period during which the market was continuously over-bold. So it doesn’t mean that the market will make a new high from this oversold position. I rather think, and I’ve written about this in my newsletter, that between around 1980 at the present time on the S&P and the high 2,134 of last May, there is huge resistance now. It will be very difficult for the market to go through. But it will depend on how much money the Fed decides to print, so that we don’t know. I think they will print, or they will cut rates. We just don’t know. And in the case of China, growth, which averaged, say, between 8% and 12% for the last 15 years, in my view will slow down to a pattern of, say, around 4% to 6% per annum maximum. Maybe trend line growth will be just 4% – maybe the government will show 6% but maybe just 4%. So the demand increase, the incremental demand that china had for commodities is not going to come back. It’s not going to collapse but it won’t increase at the same rate. Because we had huge investments in the resource sector there is at the present time sufficient supplies whereby particularly in agricultural commodities there may be shortages developing in one or the other commodity because of natural disasters like floods or droughts and so forth. Regards, Marc Faber P.S. Be sure to sign up for The Daily Reckoning — a free and entertaining look at the world of finance and politics. The articles you find here on our website are only a snippet of what you receive in The Daily Reckoning email edition. Click here now to sign up for FREE to see what you're missing. The post What’s Fueling the Bear Market appeared first on Daily Reckoning. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2016 Will Be Far Worse Than 2008 - Jeff Berwick on The Real Money Show Posted: 28 Jan 2016 11:51 AM PST Jeff is interviewed for The Real Money Show, topics include: the situation is far worse than 2008, potentially catastrophic, the system has only been kept alive by massive money printing, the Shemitah 7 year cycle and jubilee year, preserve your wealth with gold and silver, the Baltic Dry... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit http://www.newsbooze.com or http://www.figanews.com for full links, other content, and more! ]]  | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Research revives manipulation debate, suggests gold and silver collusion Posted: 28 Jan 2016 11:20 AM PST From Kitco News Researchers from three universities are re-opening the manipulation debate with their study, which suggests gold and silver prices are more likely to be meddled with on options expiry dates. The research paper, released last Sunday on the Social Science Research Network -- http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2721250 -- suggests manipulation in the gold and silver markets, with the authors hedging that its findings are not conclusive. "Do these findings clearly support the notion of price suppression? No. They are at best suggestive," said authors, Jonathan Battena of Monash University in Australia; Brian Lucey of Trinity College in Dublin, and Maurice Peat of the University of Sydney Business School. The study highlights contract expiration dates as a likely time for price manipulators to step in. The researchers said they noticed large spikes in returns around the last three days of each month, which is typically when futures and options contracts expire. ... ... For the remainder of the report: http://www.kitco.com/news/2016-01-27/Research-Revives-Manipulation-Debat... ADVERTISEMENT Free Storage with BullionStar in Singapore Until 2016 Bullion Star is a Singapore-registered company with a one-stop bullion shop, showroom, and vault at 45 New Bridge Road in Singapore. Bullion Star's solution for storing bullion in Singapore is called My Vault Storage. With My Vault Storage you can store bullion in Bullion Star's bullion vault, which is integrated with Bullion Star's shop and showroom, making it a convenient one-stop-shop for precious metals in Singapore. Customers can buy, store, sell, or request physical withdrawal of their bullion through My Vault Storage® online around the clock. Storage is FREE until 2016 and will have the most competitive rates in the industry thereafter. For more information, please visit Bullion Star here: Support GATA by purchasing DVDs of GATA's London conference in August 2011 or GATA's Dawson City conference in August 2006: http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html Or by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: To contribute to GATA, please visit: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Ronan Manly: The gold vaults of London: Malca-Amit Posted: 28 Jan 2016 08:56 AM PST 11:56a ET Wednesday, January 27, 2016 Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: Ever sleuthing, gold researcher Ronan Manly has located and examined another major London-area bullion vault. His report is headlined "The Gold Vaults of London: Malca-Amit," and it's posted at Bullion Star here: https://www.bullionstar.com/blogs/ronan-manly/gold-vaults-london-malca-a... CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer ADVERTISEMENT We Are Amid the Biggest Financial Bubble in History; With GoldCore you can own allocated -- and most importantly -- segregated coins and bars in Switzerland, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Switzerland, Singapore, and Hong Kong remain extremely safe jurisdictions for storing bullion. Avoid exchange-traded funds and digital gold providers where you are a price taker. Ensure that you are outright legal owner of your bullion. If you do not own segregated bullion that you can visit, inspect, and take delivery of, you are exposed. Crucial guides to storage in Singapore and Switzerland can be read here: http://info.goldcore.com/essential-guide-to-storing-gold-in-singapore http://info.goldcore.com/essential-guide-to-storing-gold-in-switzerland GoldCore does not report transactions to any authority. Safety, privacy, and confidentiality are paramount when we are entrusted with storage of our clients' precious metals. Email the GoldCore team at info@goldcore.com or call our trading desk: UK: +44(0)203-086-9200. U.S.: +1-302-635-1160. International: +353(0)1-632-5010. Visit us at: http://www.goldcore.com Support GATA by purchasing recordings of the proceedings of the 2014 New Orleans Investment Conference: https://jeffersoncompanies.com/landing/2014-av-powell Or by purchasing DVDs of GATA's London conference in August 2011 or GATA's Dawson City conference in August 2006: http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html Or by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: To contribute to GATA, please visit: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Fed Acknowledges Global Market Turmoil Posted: 28 Jan 2016 08:55 AM PST This post Fed Acknowledges Global Market Turmoil appeared first on Daily Reckoning. And now… today's Pfennig for your thoughts… Good day, and a tub thumpin’ Thursday to you! Well, the day yesterday was dominated by the Fed’s FOMC Meeting, so we might as well, start there today. The Fed left interest rates unchanged, as everyone thought they would, but then came the statement. Recall that I had said that the Fed would opt for what was behind door #3, which was to acknowledge the market turmoil, but continue to spread the word that the U.S. economy is fine and inflation will rise to their target, thus maintaining their rate hike cycle. And guess what? I nearly hit that bang on! The Fed signaled renewed worry about financial market turmoil and slow overseas economic growth, but said that they still believed the economy is on track to grow, produce jobs and gradually lift inflation to their 2% target, and therefore they wouldn’t rule out raising rates at their next meeting in March. OK. Let’s iron out the wrinkles here. First and foremost, I think it was important that the Fed acknowledged the market turmoil, and while “calming markets” isn’t one of their mandates, it is something that they’ve taken on as a hobby, if you will. And in saying that “they would hold their benchmark rate steady for now between 0.25% and 0.50%, they are closely monitoring developments in global economies and markets, ” I think they are admitting that they will consider market turmoil when next deciding to hike rates or not. This statement by the Fed really boosted the currencies, especially the relatively speaking, higher yielding, currencies, like Aussie dollars (A$), and New Zealand dollars/kiwi. The really higher yielding currencies like the Russian ruble, and Brazilian real both responded favorably, and are firmly on the rally tracks this morning. Gold initially went higher on the statement’s sentiment, but has given back the late afternoon gains in the overnight markets. No real reason for this giving back its gains, so you know what that means, right? The price manipulators didn’t like the strength that gold was displaying. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) did leave rates unchanged as I thought they would last night. And just as he does at every opportunity he gets, RBNZ Gov. Wheeler, decided to bash kiwi. Wheeler said, “A further depreciation in the exchange rate is appropriate given the ongoing weakness in export prices.” Oh, yes, the old, “we need the currency to depreciate to help our exports, song and dance”. I really don’t know what to tell these Central Bankers in this day and age… They want inflation, they want cheap currency, they want economic growth, when the rest of the world is slow, and they want it all, they want it all, they want it all, and they want it now! Wheeler also left the door open to a rate cut in March, and that didn’t sit well with the kiwi traders, but with the dominate Fed sounding quite dovish, the chance that the Fed wouldn’t hike rates and narrow the positive rate differential that kiwi enjoys, outweighed the door being left open to a rate cut in March. So, two Central Bank meetings down, two more to go. First up we have the Bank of Japan (BOJ) meeting tomorrow, and then the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) on Monday, when we turn the calendars to February! You may recall me giving kudos to RBA Gov. Stevens back in early December, for chastising the markets for being so myopic about monetary policy and told them to “chill out” and go home to enjoy the Christmas season, and to come back in February. Well, on Monday, I guess everyone in Australia will reconvene. The Aussie economic data has been mixed since the last RBA meeting, and things in China while got pretty hairy there to start the year, have settled down a bit, so all this tells me that the RBA will leave rates unchanged at this meeting on Monday. And that has gone a long way toward boosting the A$ in recent trading, as we draw closer to Monday’s RBA meeting. Alrighty then… let’s not forget that the Eurozone 4th QTR final CPI prints tomorrow, and will go a long way toward helping the euro maintain this winning streak it has going vs. the dollar, which happens to be the longest streak since September last year for the euro. Recall that I said that I thought CPI would increase from 0.2% to 0.3% or 0.4%, which is a good sign for the Eurozone. If, the Central Bankers all want inflation in their economies, than I would prefer that the inflation increases be nascent, and grow slowly, to give the Central Bank an opportunity to address it before inflation gets out of hand. The Chinese renminbi was allowed to appreciate at the fixing again last night, but this time it was a tiny 50 ticks appreciation. So, for the most part, I would call that a flat day for the renminbi. But 50 ticks of appreciation is better than a depreciation, Chuck, you dolt! Think about that for a minute, and when you realize that what you just said was full of doltness, then you can come out of the corner and join the rest of the people here! HA! China injected 590 billion renminbi into the money markets this week, which happens to be the largest weekly injection of liquidity in three years for China. That’s a lot of dough, folks. But what have I told you over the years about China? That they have a Treasure Chest of reserves to use when things get tough. And use them they have! It’s just really tough times right now, with the economies of Japan, U.K., Eurozone and U.S. either in recession or heading to recession, or just coming out of recession, and not demanding Chinese exports, the Chinese are lost for an answer. They tried very much so, to develop a domestic demand driven economy, but that never really got the chance to thrive, given the economic slowdown of the global economies. The Chinese know exports, and while the trade numbers continue to be relatively good, it’s just not enough to give China the chest pounding strength in its economy that it once had, not that long ago! A dear reader sent me an article that was calling for a Plaza Accord between China and the U.S. which I thought was interesting, in that I believe that the Plaza Accord that occurred in 1985 had something to do with Japan’s lost decades. Anyway. then I saw an article on the Bloomberg calling for the world’s Central Banks to plan for coordinated currency intervention akin to the 1985 Plaza Accord to keep the dollar from strengthening more. WOW! Joint currency interventions helped stem the previous two dollar strengthening periods since the 1980s, and “it is quite likely that similar actions will be needed in this big USD cycle, wrote Alan Ruskin, co-head of global foreign exchange research at Deutsche Bank. Ruskin believes that this coordinated currency intervention is what’s needed to stop the dollar and help the Chinese renminbi/Chinese. That’s pretty interesting stuff, but I doubt that in this day and age, that finance ministers will agree to do something like that, given that they’ve all joined the currency wars, and have set out to weaken their currencies, why would they want to scrap that go about making their respective currencies strong again, at the dollar’s expense? So, once again, it’s all wishful thinking. But, you never know, right? I just think everyone needs to calm down regarding China. There’s no need for a Plaza Accord, and there’s no need to bail them out currency wise. They will be just fine. Well, I talked about gold above, and how it is giving back its gains from yesterday afternoon, after the Fed statement. I realized yesterday that it’s been some time since I last attempted to be “fair and balanced” regarding gold, and then I ran into a report on www.agmetalminer.com where they had this to say about gold’s rally so far this year:
I maintain that no one really knows (except maybe the price manipulators) where gold is going to go. I think it should be higher in value given the fundamentals, but it is isn’t, so where does that leave us? It leaves us at square one. we don’t know where the price of gold is headed, but we have a very well informed, and educated idea where it “should go”! Well, the U.S. Data Cupboard certainly put the housing sector participants in a good mood yesterday, when it was reported that New Home Sales for December jumped 10.8%, thereby blowing the expectations out of the water! Now, before we all go out and start clanging glasses together, and giving cheer to each other, or before we decide to join the conga-line for a dance around the office, let’s sit back and review some things. For instance, did you know that Sub-Prime home loans are back in style? Did you know that you can buy a home with as little as a 3% down payment on loans from FHA, Fannie and Freddie Mac? Now, I don’t have details on how many of these 3% down loans were processed in December, nor do I have details on how many Sub-Prime loans were processed in December, but I do know that the FHA insures 22% of all loans originated. And one would think that there would be a fair number of Sub Prime and 3% down loans in those origination loan docs? Doesn’t sound to me like we’ve learned anything, have we? When will they ever learn, when, will, they, ever, learn? I’m bound to get some flak for talking about Sub Prime and 3% down mortgage loans, but Shoot Rudy, I’m just trying to explain how New Home Sales numbers would be so large! The U.S. Data Cupboard today, finally has some Tier 1 Data, which comes in the form of December Durable Goods Orders & Capital Goods Orders, which should both continue their streaks of printing negative numbers. These two pieces of data are a part of what I call “key data for an economy”, and their insistence on printing negative is one of the reasons I believe the U.S. economy is headed to Recessionville. Before I head to the Big Finish today, I wanted to mention that in the U.K. a jury acquitted six former brokers of fraudulently trying to manipulate a widely used benchmark interest rates. Libor – Tom Hayes was convicted of this charge a year ago, and these six brokers were accused of conspiring with Tom Hayes. Well, if it weren’t these six, where’s the next six? Because the guy didn’t do it by himself! UGH! I came across this article on Ed Steer’s letter, and he had pulled it from www.wolfstreet.com and it talks about something that I’ve been keeping you up to date with, the Corporate bond/junk bond meltdown. Let’s see what Wolf Richter has to say on his website that can be found at the link above.
Chuck again. This whole mess comes about from years of easy credit, and low interest rates that caused investors to stop outside of their normal comfort zones when it came to investing, as they looked for higher yields. There are other things responsible but these are the big 2. That’s it for today. I hope you have a tub thumpin’ Thursday! Regards, Chuck Butler P.S. Be sure to sign up for The Daily Reckoning — a free and entertaining look at the world of finance and politics. The articles you find here on our website are only a snippet of what you receive in The Daily Reckoning email edition. Click here now to sign up for FREE to see what you're missing. The post Fed Acknowledges Global Market Turmoil appeared first on Daily Reckoning. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Alasdair Macleod: Surprises in store Posted: 28 Jan 2016 08:17 AM PST By Alasdair Macleod From the peaks of last year stock indices in the major markets have fallen 10-20%, give or take. On their own, these falls could be read as healthy corrections in an ongoing bull market, and doubtless there are investors hanging on to their investments in the hope that this is true. The conditions that have led to the fall in equities are tied up in the realization that global economic activity has contracted sharply. This is now reflected in the performance of medium and long-dated US Treasury bonds, where yields have declined, despite a rise in the Fed Funds Rate. The problem equity markets face is not just a reaction to growing evidence of recession, it is that the normal Fed solution, lower interest rates, is exhausted. The Fed's put option is now being questioned. Far from this being an equity correction in the early stages of a credit cycle, which is what the small step towards normalization of US interest rates would have had us believe, the evidence points to a developing debt crisis, whose future course we can now tentatively map, though there are important differences to observe compared with a normal credit cycle. ... ... For the remainder of the report: https://www.goldmoney.com/surprises-in-store?gmrefcode=gata ADVERTISEMENT Buy metals at GoldMoney and enjoy international storage GoldMoney was established in 2001 by James and Geoff Turk and is safeguarding more than $1.7 billion in metals and currencies. Buy gold, silver, platinum, and palladium from GoldMoney over the Internet and store them in vaults in Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, taking advantage of GoldMoney's low storage rates, among the most competitive in the industry. GoldMoney also offers delivery of 100-gram and 1-kilogram gold bars and 1-kilogram silver bars. To learn more, please visit: http://www.goldmoney.com/?gmrefcode=gata Support GATA by purchasing recordings of the proceedings of the 2014 New Orleans Investment Conference: https://jeffersoncompanies.com/landing/2014-av-powell Or by purchasing DVDs of GATA's London conference in August 2011 or GATA's Dawson City conference in August 2006: http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html Or by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: To contribute to GATA, please visit: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| TF Metals Report: The LBMA strikes back Posted: 28 Jan 2016 08:09 AM PST 11:08a ET Thursday, January 28, 2016 Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: The TF Metals Report's Turd Ferguson writes today that the London Bullion Market Association seems to be trying to subvert an incipient physical gold and silver exchange. The report is headlined "The LBMA Strikes Back" and it's posted here: http://www.tfmetalsreport.com/blog/7407/lbma-strikes-back CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer ADVERTISEMENT Buy precious metals free of value-added tax throughout Europe Europe Silver Bullion is a fast-growing dealer sourcing its products from renowned mints, refiners, and distributors. Because of a legal loophole that will close soon, you can acquire the world's most popular bullion coins free of value-added tax throughout the European Union. You can collect your order in person at our headquarters in Tallinn, Estonia, or have it delivered in any of the 28 EU countries. Europe Silver Bullion is owned and operated by North American and European experts in selling, storing, and transporting precious metals. We have an extensive product inventory of silver, gold, platinum, and palladium, and our network spans the world. Visit us at www.europesilverbullion.com. Support GATA by purchasing DVDs of GATA's London conference in August 2011 or GATA's Dawson City conference in August 2006: http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html Or by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: To contribute to GATA, please visit: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 'Anti-arb compliance' sinks London silver 'fix' 6%, spot rallies straight back Posted: 28 Jan 2016 07:51 AM PST From BullionVault.com, London Silver prices sank almost 80 cents at Thursday lunchtime's London benchmarking, hitting the lowest level in seven years, while gold prices and Comex silver futures contracts held almost unchanged near multi-month highs, thanks to what some traders called the unintended consequences of regulatory compliance by banks and brokerages. Modelled on the century-old "London Fix" it replaced in 2014 -- and which offered a moment of unlimited liquidity to would-be buyers and sellers -- the LBMA Silver Price became a formally regulated benchmark under UK law last April. ... ... For the remainder of the report: https://www.bullionvault.com/gold-news/silver-price-012820162 ADVERTISEMENT Silver mining stock report comes with 1-ounce silver round Future Money Trends is offering a special 18-page silver mining stock report about how to profit with the monetary and industrial metal, and it comes with a free 1-ounce silver round. Proceeds from the report's sales are shared with the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee to support its efforts to expose manipulation in the monetary metals markets. To learn about this report, please visit: Support GATA by purchasing DVDs of GATA's London conference in August 2011 or GATA's Dawson City conference in August 2006: http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html Or by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: To contribute to GATA, please visit: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| FOMC Dovish: Gold to Go Higher and Stocks to Bounce Posted: 28 Jan 2016 06:03 AM PST The worsening of financial conditions this year led markets to price in rates to remain unchanged at the January FOMC meeting, with many speculating the Fed to deliver a dovish statement. This has now been realised. Language used described that the FOMC recognised that economic activity had slowed and that inflationary pressures and expectations had “decline further”. As a result, it will now take an improvement in financial market conditions for the Fed to hike again at their next meeting, which is in March. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| China's central bank may buy 215 tons of gold this year, Barclays forecasts Posted: 28 Jan 2016 05:46 AM PST By Ranjeetha Pakiam China will press on with gold purchases this year and the central bank will probably scoop up more than 200 metric tons as the country seeks to diversify its reserves, according to an estimate from Barclays Plc. Bullion purchases by the People's Bank of China in recent months have been very steady, which is "particularly impressive given that China's total forex reserve has recorded large declines," analyst Feifei Li said in an e-mailed report. In 2016, buying may average about 17.9 tons a month, or 215 tons over the full year, she wrote. Central banks led by China, Russia, and Kazakhstan have been adding bullion to their reserves, helping to support prices that have been lifted this year by increased haven demand amid a global rout in stocks. Annual purchases of more than 200 tons by the PBOC would exceed the entire holdings of all but about 20 countries worldwide, according to data from the World Gold Council. ... ... For the remainder of the report: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-28/china-to-buy-more-than... ADVERTISEMENT USAGold: Coins and bullion since 1973 USAGold, well known for its Internet site, USAGold.com, offers contemporary bullion coins and bullion-related historic gold coins for delivery to private investors in the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. It is one of the oldest and most respected names in the gold industry, with thousands of clients and an approach to investment that emphasizes guidance and individual needs over high-pressure sales tactics. The firm's zero-complaint record at the Better Business Bureau makes it an ideal match for the conservative, long-term investor looking for a reliable contact in the gold business. Please call 1-800-869-5115x100 and ask for the trading desk, or visit: USAGold: Great prices, quick delivery -- all the time. Support GATA by purchasing DVDs of GATA's London conference in August 2011 or GATA's Dawson City conference in August 2006: http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html Or by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: To contribute to GATA, please visit: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The gold market just lost its best measure of Chinese demand Posted: 28 Jan 2016 05:40 AM PST By Myra P. Saefong http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-gold-market-just-lost-its-best-meas... The Shanghai Gold Exchange has stopped publishing its weekly gold withdrawal figures, forcing the market to lose its "best measure of Chinese wholesale demand," according to Koos Jansen, precious-metals analyst and blogger for Singapore-based bullion dealer BullionStar. Jansen, well known for his analyses on the Chinese gold market, pointed out in a blog Jan. 26 that the SGE's Chinese Market Data Weekly Reports on the first two trading weeks of this year don't list gold vault withdrawal figures. He said the SGE told him those figures will no longer be published. ... Dispatch continues below ... ADVERTISEMENT Direct Ownership and Storage of Precious Metals Goldbroker.com is a precious metals investment company that enables investors to own and store gold directly in their own name (no mutualized ownership) in Zurich and Singapore. Goldbroker's clients are not exposed to any counterparty risks. They own gold and silver in their own names (the ownership certificate cites the name of the investor and serial number of his bars) and they have storage accounts opened in their own name as well. So Goldbroker.com's storage partner knows the exact identity of each investor. Goldbroker.com doesn't store in the name of its clients; rather, Goldbroker's clients store personally. All investors have direct access to their gold and silver bars. Goldbroker.com was launched in 2011 so that investors would avoid any counterparty risk when investing in physical gold and silver. Goldbroker.com is listed among GATA's recommended monetary metals dealers: To invest or learn more, please visit: "SGE withdrawals provided a unique transparent metric for Chinese gold demand and [they're] gone," said Jansen in his blog. They provided a "spy-hole" to track the Chinese gold market. There are rules and tax incentives in China that "push all physical gold supply to be sold over the SGE. The amount of gold that is withdrawn from its vaults equals physical gold demand," he told MarketWatch by email. The market can only guess why China decided to stop publishing the data. But Jansen suggested that with the withdrawals from the vaults of the SGE being watched by an increasing number of analysts around the world, "the Chinese judged these figures had become too sensitive and discontinued publication since January 2016." Similarly, Julian Phillips, founder of and contributor to GoldForecaster.com, said the "significance of the hiding of accurate figures in China" is to prevent that picture of the gold market "from inciting speculators and investors outside of China from buying gold on the back of Chinese demand." It's an "attempt to muddy the waters of the gold market while China takes control of that market," said Phillips. China has a history of holding back gold data. Back in July the People's Bank of China published figures on its gold reserves for the first time since 2009. Whatever the reason for the lack of SGE withdrawal numbers, that China stopped publishing the data "once again strongly confirms the importance of these numbers from the past," Jansen said. ... Brien Lundin, editor of Gold Newsletter, pointed out that mainstream industry groups like GFMS, Metals Focus, CPM Group, and the World Gold Council "never recognized this data in the first place so this will, in essence, be a nonevent for them." Jansen explained in a blog last year that figures on Chinese gold demand from Western consultancy firms differ from the SGE vault withdrawals because of "contrasting metrics." Even so, "for those of us who placed great confidence that SGE withdrawals reflected domestic Chinese demand, it will be a great loss," said Lundin. Support GATA by purchasing DVDs of GATA's London conference in August 2011 or GATA's Dawson City conference in August 2006: http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html Or by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: To contribute to GATA, please visit: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Eric Hadik on Gold, Oil, and Stocks; Sees Accelerating Crash Cycles in 2016 Posted: 27 Jan 2016 04:00 PM PST Can cycles be used to time the market? Financial Sense recently caught up with Eric Hadik, editor and publisher of INSIIDE Track Trading, to get his outlook on stocks, oil, gold, and more. In 2014, Eric accurately predicted the US dollar would see a strong and sustained rally... |
Everyone knows that government expenses and deficits are out of control. Think U.S., Europe, the U.K., Japan, and others. So what?
Yesterday, the U.S. Treasury's Office of Financial Research (OFR) released its 
| You are subscribed to email updates from Save Your ASSets First. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States | |
What happens to the assets in a custodial account in the event of a death? See more here: ugma custodian .
ReplyDelete