Gold World News Flash |
- Forbes Yanks a Negative Article on JPMorgan While the Bank Pays for Content
- Spring Crash Coming for Markets AND Gold/Silver — Jeff Nielson Interview
- Will The American People Succeed In Clawing-Back Their Democracy?
- Soon After We Sounded The Alarm, Canada's Regulator Warns Local Banks Are Underreserved To Energy Losses
- Gold Price Closed at $1243.80 Down $10 or -0.8%
- The Assassination of Donald Trump
- Food Stamps Will Be A Lot Harder To Get
- This Critical Consumer Is Buying Gold For The First Time In Three Weeks
- "Cuba is one Big Jail" | Dana
- Misplaced Confidence In The ECB - Lessons From John Law's Mississippi Bubble
- Donald Trump's Full Rousing Speech AIPAC Policy Conference (3-21-16)
- GREAT INTERVIEW The Economic Collapse Accelerating Events Disclosures Jim Willie 2016
- Silver Eagle Sales To Jump 25% Due To Deteriorating Market Conditions
- Clearing the Field and Realigning American Politics
- Why the Rally in Stocks Can’t Be Trusted
- Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Silver Shows More Staying Power Than Gold
- TF Metals Report: Bullion bank desperation and motive
- DOW JONES vs SILVER: Trading Volume Says It All
- The War On Cash Is Real!
- Oil and the Curious Case of the FOMO “Disease”
- Oil, Gold, The Collapse of Central Banking ~ Interview with Chris Martenson 21 March 2016
- Silver – A Long-Term Perspective
- Gold Silver Ratio Says It’s Time to Buy Silver, Sell Gold
- Silver Price About to Slump Lower
- Gold Price Intermediate Top
| Forbes Yanks a Negative Article on JPMorgan While the Bank Pays for Content Posted: 21 Mar 2016 09:20 PM PDT by Pam Martens and Russ Martens, Wall Street on Parade:
This past Friday, March 18, Laurence Kotlikoff, a Forbes contributor, Professor of Economics at Boston University and bestselling co-author of Get What's Yours: The Secrets To Maxing Out Your Social Security, tweeted the headline of an article he had just posted at Forbes: "JPMorgan Chase – The True Story of America's Most Corrupt Bank." The Tweet linked to a two-page article by Kotlikoff at Forbes, which began with these two paragraphs: "Between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, we've heard a lot about the corruption on Wall Street. But, if you want to understand exactly what happened and why, read JPMadoff: The Unholy Alliance Between America's Biggest Bank and America's Biggest Crook. "Written by trial lawyers, Helen Davis Chaitman and Lance Gotthoffer, this heavily-researched, meticulously documented book lays out for the world to see the absolute corruption of JPMorgan Chase – America's biggest bank. And the authors explain how Obama has furthered Wall Street crime by refusing to enforce America's criminal laws against America's biggest criminals – not Madoff, but JPMorgan Chase." By Friday evening, all that one got at the link to Kotlikoff's article was a Forbes' error message saying the page couldn't be found. By this morning, even a partial Google cache of the article is giving the reader just a second or so to see the headline, then disappearing into thin air. |
| Spring Crash Coming for Markets AND Gold/Silver — Jeff Nielson Interview Posted: 21 Mar 2016 08:20 PM PDT from VisionVictory: |
| Will The American People Succeed In Clawing-Back Their Democracy? Posted: 21 Mar 2016 07:20 PM PDT Authored by Paul Craig Roberts, With much help from the failures of neoliberal economic policy and neoconservative foreign policy, we are changing the world. Look at Bernie Sanders’ inroads on the corrupt Clintons’ control of the Democratic Party. Look at how easily Donald Trump defeated the Republican establishment’s candidates. Some Americans are catching on, shedding their unawareness. I am not confident that Sanders or Trump could bring change. In The Deep State (2016), Mike Lofgren concludes that powerful private interest groups, such as the military/security complex and the financial sector, have hijacked democracy. Still, voters’ interest in Sanders and Trump, despite the beating they receive in the media, is a positive sign. Voters are supporting them not so much for their positions on issues as for the fact that neither are part of the Washington establishment. Many voters now understand that the political establishment represents the One Percent, not them. A New Russia has appeared on the scene and demonstrated to the entire world its power to checkmate the hegemonic ambition of the crazed neoconservatives who have controlled the US government since Bill Clinton. The world now understands that the leadership for peace comes from Russia not from warmonger Washington. Washington’s vassals in Europe are in disarray, with the Northern European EU members plundering the Southern EU members, with all of Europe overrun with refugees fleeing Washington’s hoax “war against terrorism.” Europeans are beginning to realize that the establishment political parties that they have blindly supported since World War 2 are nothing but agents of Washington, who serve Washington and not Europeans. Merkel, Cameron, Hollande are puppets of Washington, not leaders of the German, British, and French people. The Chinese government is finally beginning to realize that the neoliberal American economic policies that it has so slavishly been copying have led it into economic difficulties. Perhaps China will now cease to follow America into oblivion. The Russians have learned that being part of the Western system subjects them to economic sanctions and makes it easy for Washington to interfere in Russian internal affairs. The Russians are beginning to show that their desire for their independence is greater than their desire to be accepted by a corrupt, immoral, decadent, and failing West. Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders speak to Americans’ loss of economic opportunity and financial independence. Today the 99 Percent are slaves to their debt burdens and lack of productive employment, while those who deceived them into these burdens and lowly-paid employment in domestic services are reveling in multi-million dollar annual paychecks. The US Treasury, Federal Reserve, and financial regulators are corrupted by the private financial interests that control them. The US government serves only the One Percent. Despite this obvious fact, many Democratic Party voters—-traditionally the less well off, union members, and American blacks—-are turning out for Hillary Clinton, a tried and proven representative of the One Percent. The Clintons have been enriched to the amount of $153 million by the ruling One Percent who own the Clintons lock, stock, and barrel. Yet the dispossessed vote for Hillary. Clearly, many American voters, as Thomas Frank made clear in his book, What’s the Matter with Kansas?, still have no clue as to their own interests and vote to elect their worst enemies. Many Americans are still trapped in The Matrix and kept there by the propaganda that masquerades in the US as “news.” Consider the possible implications if Americans were to enable Hillary Clinton to become President. Trump has said that he would work things out with Vladimir Putin, but Hillary has declared the President of Russia to be “the new Hitler.” How can Hillary work anything out with “the new Hitler”? She cannot. It is a great irony that the American lower class, traditionally served by the Democratic Party, could put in the White House not only a person who only represents the super-rich but also a person who cannot escape confict with Russia, a country with possibly the most capable military force on the planet. The psychopathic Washington neoconservatives who have controlled US foreign policy since the Clinton regime, misintepret Vladimir Putin’s peaceful diplomacy as a sign of Russian weakness. The neocons say: “See Putin is weak. He is pulling out of Syria.” But what Putin says is different. Putin says: “We have created the conditions for peace in Syria.” If Washington abuses these conditions, “Russia can, in several hours, build up its forces in Syria to a size capable of dealing with an escalating situation and use the entire range of means at its disposal.” Putin adds: “We hope the parties involved would show common sense.” From a position of strength, Putin has rolled the dice. Is there common sense in the West? I fail to see any. I see arrogance, hubris, idiocy, immorality, inhumanity, complete and total stupidity. These are the characteristics of Western governments. They amount to a deranged criminal enterprise organized against humanity. In the awards of medals to those Russians who served against ISIS, Putin stated: “Our uncompromising attitude to terrorism remains unchanged.” If we take this statement broadly, it means not merely Muslim jihadists but the terrorism of the West—-the destruction of seven or more countries by the US and its vassals in the 21st century, the long-term sanctions against Iran, Russia, and a number of other countries whose governments do not comply with Washington’s dictates. Putin has told Washington and Washington’s European puppets, Cameron, Merkel, Hollande, that he has had enough of them. They must reform themselves, become honorable governments committed to the welfare of humanity, and abandon self-serving policies of plunder. Considering the total failure of the United States to subdue after 15 years a few thousand lightly armed Taliban, the American people need to understand that the US military, corrupted by privatizations to enhance former vice president Dick Cheney’s stock options in Halliburton and by over-cost weapons systems that serve the profits of the armaments industries and not the military competence of the fighting force, has lost its edge in weapons superiority. The latest over-cost American fighter jet, for example, according to the Air Force’s own conclusions cannot match the old figher it is intended to replace, whereas the lastest Russian fighter is said to have the capability to electronically shut down American control systems, track simultaneously 24 enemy fighters and lock on 10 simultanteously for unavoidable destruction. Members of the US military command have expressed concern over the high quality of Russian weapon systems. Everyone needs to understand that the establishments of the two American political parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, are less interested in winning the election than in continuing to control the party. Trump and Sanders are hated by the party establishments, because Trump and Sanders are not members of the establishment. Control over the party by the party establishment is so important that we have many members of the Republican establishment declaring that if Trump wins the Republican nomination, they will vote for the Democrat. This has happened before. It was Republicans who denied the presidency to Republican candidate Barry Goldwater. The United States is a failing society. Citizens’ hopes are being snuffed out. There are few good jobs or enough jobs of any kind, as the collapse of the labor force participation rate confirms. People are drowning in debts that they have no prospect of ever paying off. Young adults cannot form independent households. The oligarchy that rules and controls the country has committed America to massively expensive wars and privacy invasions for the purpose of establishing a hegemony that enriches elite private interests. The corupt and unrepentant financial sector, having survived its mortgage-backed security fiasco without prosecution or correction has repeated its previous folly with a new weapon of potential financial mass destrution. Speculators have bought up distressed properties and rented them. The rental streams are bundled into financial instruments, as were the mortgage payments previously, and sold to investors. Is a renter more committed and better able to pay than a person with a mortgage? Jobs offshoring and financialization have drained the US economy of the ability to grow. The ladders of upward mobility have been dismantled, and the service of debt curtails consumer demand for goods and services. The wage saving from offshoring jobs raises corporate profits and brings executive bonuses and capital gains to the One Percent. Financialization divests consumer purchasing power into the service of debt. The result is stagnation and decline. Foreign policy based on threats and coercion means constant conflict. The US has been in constant conflict since the Clinton regime overthrew the government in Serbia. Constant conflict is expensive, and Americans have had these expensive costs imposed on them simultaneously with the costs of jobs offshoring and financialization. It was 20 months ago that Malaysian Airlines flight 17 was destroyed over Ukraine. Despite the inability of the investigation to come to a conclusion, from the first moment Western propaganda has blamed the loss of 298 lives on Russia. Three days after the airliner’s destruction, US Secretary of State John Kerry set in stone the blame on Russia with his claim that “we saw the take-off [of the Buk missile]. We saw the trajectory. We saw the hit. We saw this airplane disappear from the radar screens. So there is really no mystery about where it came from and where these weapons have come from.” If the US has all the evidence, why hasn’t the US government released it? Obviously, there is no such evidence. Why would Washington fail to release evidence that proved Russian responsibility? Kerry’s evidence no more exists than the alleged evidence the US government claims to have from numerous security cameras that a passenger airliner hit the Pentagon on 9/11. If the government had such evidence why has the government refused to release it for almost 15 years? If the government produced this evidence, it would be a death blow to the 9/11 Truth movement. The evidence no more exists than the alleged evidence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, that Iran had a nuclear weapons program, that Assad used chemical weapons, that Russia invaded Ukraine. The terms of the last three US presidents have been used to squander trillions of dollars on pointless wars and construction of a domestic police state on the basis of a non-existant “terrorist threat.” This alleged threat has been reinforced with false flag events and a fake history spun from lies repeateded endlessly by government and its presstitutes. In 1994 Christopher Lasch wrote in The Revolt of the Elites: “In our time, the chief threat seems to come from those at the top of the social hierarchy.” As Lasch said, the greed of the elites for money and power have undermined the constitutional basis of the United States. The elites have used their power to betray democracy. Will the American people succeed in clawing back their democracy? |
| Posted: 21 Mar 2016 06:56 PM PDT Back in early February, Zero Hedge laid out what was the biggest crisis facing Canada's banks: a chronic under reserving to potential (and soon, realized) oil and gas loan losses. As we said nearly two months ago, "for Canada, it's not only raining, it's pouring for the country's energy industry, a downpour which is about to migrate into its banking sector. Which is why it is indeed time to take a somewhat deeper dive into the Canadian banks' balance sheets, where we find something very troubling, and something which prompts us to wonder if the time of freaking out about European banks is about to be replaced with comparable panic about Canadian banks. The following chart from an analysis by RBC shows that when compared to US banks' (artificially low) reserves for oil and gas exposure, Canadian banks are...not. Here is the one chart showing why the time to panic about Canadian banks may have finally arrived:
Two months later, we are happy to announce that Canada's regulator has caught up to our warning, and as the WSJ reported, "Canada's banking regulator is urging the country's major banks to review their accounting practices to ensure they have sufficient reserves as the commodity-price collapse takes a toll on the economy." As we first suggested in early February, Canada's Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions is now warning local lenders should scrutinize their collective allowances and reserve funds that act as cushions to absorb potential future loan losses, the regulator's chief said in an interview. "We want them to take a good look at their accounting practices," said Superintendent of Financial Institutions Jeremy Rudin. "They should support loss-absorbing capacity and the ability to manage through difficult times in general," he added.
Some of the banks laughed at us when we suggested they are purposefully masking their exposure to distressed loans; we wonder if they will also laugh when their regulator tells them to do precisely that. As the WSJ further writes, "Canada's regulator is giving the country's six biggest banks this guidance on their accounting as they face mounting criticism from some analysts that they haven't amassed enough reserves to cover soured loans to the energy sector. That criticism was a recurring theme during calls following their fiscal first-quarter results, in which many banks warned of rising provisions for credit losses but assured investors their rainy-day cushions were adequate." Here is the WSJ chart released today which is oddly identical to the one we showed many weeks ago:
Next, the WSJ summarizes the details of what is known about Canadian loan exposure:
Actually, that is only half the picture: as we explained in "The Next Cockroach Emerges: Including Undrawn Loans, Canadian Banks Exposure To Oil Doubles" if one includes undrawn (but committed) bank exposure, the number doubles. Indeed, when adding "untapped loans in the form of undrawn revolvers and other committed but unused credit facilities, Canadian banks' exposure to the struggling oil-and-gas industry more than doubles from the current C$50 billion in outstanding loans generally highlighted by Royal Bank of Canada, Toronto-Dominion Bank and the country's four other large lenders in quarterly earnings calls and presentations, to C$107 billion ($80 billion)." We expect the WSJ to catch up with this critical angle of the story in the next 4-weeks, one which would imply the all-in loss reserves are about 50% lower than the already alarming estimates. For now, however, what we do know is that most banks declined to comment, including on how they have responded to the regulator's guidance. "We have no comment on this specifically, but are confident in our current provisioning practices," said Ali Duncan Martin, a spokeswoman for Toronto-Dominion Bank, Canada's No. 2 lender by assets, in an email. For their part, Canad's banks did what they also do: float in a sea of denial. A spokeswoman for an industry group representing the lenders, the Canadian Bankers Association, said that Canadian banks aren't under-reserved. Well, they clearly are, but admitting as much would unleash the market's realization just how wrong its valuation of Canadian banks has been. Not only are Canadian banks under-reserved, they are also purposefully opaque to prevent investors from making a comprehensive health assessment:
He almost certainly won't get it, unless for some reason, the Dallas Fed make it explicit that Canadian banks have to be more transparent in a few weeks when bank borrowing base redeterminations are made in negotiations which will include not only Canadian and US commercial banks, but the Dallas Fed as well as the US OCC.
We can tell Mr. Rudin what will happen: the OSFI will play the same role that the US OCC played in recent preliminary, if quite definitive, discussions between US lenders and shale producers, the same discussions which the Dallas Fed denied ever took place even though both Credit Suisse and the WSJ confirmed our story: discussions which made it clear to US banks not to force defaults, but to suspend MTM until the local lenders can force the underlying company to issue debt (just like Weatherford) and use the proceeds to take out the secured lender bank. Expect precisely the same in Canada over the next few months as Canada's lenders are told to quietly, if aggressively, unwind their exposure to all Canadian oil and gas companies. |
| Gold Price Closed at $1243.80 Down $10 or -0.8% Posted: 21 Mar 2016 06:32 PM PDT Maybe some of y'all know what's going on and can share it with this nat'ral born durn fool from Tennessee. Markets seem frozen, hovering but unable to fly higher. US dollar index rose a leetle today, just enough to bump up against resistance at 95.30. Can it punch through? Indicators don't favor it. Rose 18 basis points (0.19%) to 95.30. I remind y'all the dollar's position is precarious, but not fatal until it falls through 92.50 support. Till then, the jury is still out on whether the buck can resume its rally. Euro's chart doesn't particularly inspire me, either. It jumped up on the dollar's bad luck, but traded back down into a gap and now shows all the energy of a dead pig in the sunshine. Down 0.26% today to $1.1241. Y'all really are watching an "historical" event, namely, the dissolution of Europe and a 2000 year old civilization. Better the Holy Roman Empire by far than this chiseling, whining, self-indulgent & self-deceived indecision. Japan is in the same boat with Europe, a demographic nightmare where shortly their aging population will be spending more for adult diapers than they do for food. Yen today lost 0.36% to 89.32. Consolidation area is either a top or breath-catching for another run higher. Stocks wanted to fall today, and by 11:00 were down 50 points. Friends came in about then and bid the Dow up to close at 17,623.87, up 21.57 or 0.12%. S&P rose a magnificent 2.02 (0.1%) to 2,051.60. Cheering was muted. One thing y'all had better never forget about human nature is that everybody would rather hear a comfortable lie than an uncomfortable truth. Deceive me, but don't disturb me. That's why markets and civilizations fall over cliffs. Right now the stock markets are believing what they want, namely that central banks will keep the liquor -- cheap new money -- flowing so the party can rock on. They don't realize that the band has died. All the same, Dow has risen for seven of the last seven days. Both major indices stand above their 200 day moving averages. In the end, stupid is incredibly long-lived, although eventually reality catches up with it. Dow in gold has crossed its 50 day moving average, which is a likely target for a turnaround. Dow in silver is jiggling around that 50 DMA, too, but seems more likely to reach its 200 DMA before it turns around. Gold dropped back $10 (0.8%) to $1,243.80 on Comex. Silver gainsaid, rising 3.5 (0.22%) to 1584.1¢. The ratio has fallen from a high (on this End of Day Chart) of 84.38 down to 78.51 today. More important, it has fallen to its bottom channel line. If it hits that line, it must either punch through or react back toward the upper boundary, as it has since last October. What would a punch through need? Runaway SILVER PRICE over 1625¢ & pounding leather for 1800¢. Maybe, but oftentimes during gold & silver rallies, silver outperforms toward the END, not the beginning, of a rally. So its present location near that bottom range boundary looks more like and end than a beginning. A reversal upward would need only a GOLD PRICE correction, which seems to be taking place. Silver often rises faster than gold, but almost always falls faster. Faster falling silver would raise the Gold/Silver Ratio. (It's a fraction, folks.) Then we've got silver, still paying out that bowl formation. Yep, the chart is messy because all this action is messy. I keep thinking silver will drop once more to complete the right shoulder of an upside-down head & shoulders bottom. Right now it is caught between the extended rising edge of that bowl and 1600¢ resistance (Neckline?) it cannot penetrate. Something will give, & it looks like it will be silver on this first try. This is a dangerous game. I cheerfully admit that if silver does burst through 1600¢ it would run to 1830¢ or so. Still, it think silver must see that correction first, to purge the optimism and ready itself for another rally. Today gold closed below its 20 day moving average -- not much, but it's a break. Panic would follow a close below $1,225. RSI is pointing down, along with volume, the MACD, Rate of Change. Commitments of Traders remain bearish. Not much positive to point to. Needs a correction. Any close above $1,290 would knock all that in the head and send gold shooting for $1,310. This is Holy Week. I will not send out a commentary on Good Friday. 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. US $ and US$-denominated assets, primary trend down; real estate bubble has burst, primary trend down. WARNING AND DISCLAIMER. Be advised and warned: Do NOT use these commentaries to trade futures contracts. I don't intend them for that or write them with that short term trading outlook. I write them for long-term investors in physical metals. Take them as entertainment, but not as a timing service for futures. NOR do I recommend investing in gold or silver Exchange Trade Funds (ETFs). Those are NOT physical metal and I fear one day one or another may go up in smoke. Unless you can breathe smoke, stay away. Call me paranoid, but the surviving rabbit is wary of traps. NOR do I recommend trading futures options or other leveraged paper gold and silver products. These are not for the inexperienced. NOR do I recommend buying gold and silver on margin or with debt. What DO I recommend? Physical gold and silver coins and bars in your own hands. One final warning: NEVER insert a 747 Jumbo Jet up your nose. |
| The Assassination of Donald Trump Posted: 21 Mar 2016 06:15 PM PDT The establishment wants someone to assassinate Donald Trump. 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! ]]  |
| Food Stamps Will Be A Lot Harder To Get Posted: 21 Mar 2016 05:43 PM PDT Huge changes to the food stamp program may leave a million Americans hungry. 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! ]]  |
| This Critical Consumer Is Buying Gold For The First Time In Three Weeks Posted: 21 Mar 2016 05:37 PM PDT Submitted by Dave Forrest of Pierce Points The First Gold Buying In 3 Weeks Happening For This Critical Consumer Major news in the gold market over the weekend. With the world's largest gold-consuming nation reaching an agreement to resume metal sales for the first time in nearly three weeks. That's in India. A critical gold consumer globally, where buying had been idled since the beginning of March by a nation-wide strike by the jewelry sector. But that strike is now officially over. With the president of India Bullion and Jewelers Association, Mohit Kamboj, announcing late Saturday that jewellers have reached an agreement with the government to return to work. Details are still emerging, but here's one of the most critical takeaways: as part of the back-to-work deal, the Indian government will not roll back the 1% sales tax on gold that it announced in a surprise move as part of its February 29 budget. That sales tax had been the major trigger for the jewellers strike. But it appears that India's gold sellers have relented on demands that the government shelve the extra levy. Instead, reports suggest that jewellers had been appeased by assurances from the government that they would not be "harassed" over the collection of the new tax. It's difficult to know exactly what this means. Although it could suggest that tax officials may not push collection of the sales tax — rendering this more of a cosmetic measure than a practical one. Whatever the case, the good news for the gold market is that India will now be buying again — for the first time since February. Which should give a lift to gold prices — especially with reports suggesting there is a lot of "pent up" demand here after the 19-day strike. Watch for imports into India to rise for the coming weeks, and potentially lift the gold price. And keep an eye out for more details on how the 1% sales tax will be implemented — with this measure having the potential to dampen gold sales here in the longer term. Here's to a triumphant return.
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| Posted: 21 Mar 2016 05:00 PM PDT Victoria Coates, Senator Cruz's senior foreign policy adviser, joins Dana 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! ]]  |
| Misplaced Confidence In The ECB - Lessons From John Law's Mississippi Bubble Posted: 21 Mar 2016 04:50 PM PDT Submitted by Alasdair Macleod via GoldMoney.com, Last week, the ECB extended its monetary madness, pushing deposit rates further into negative figures. It is extending quantitative easing from sovereign debt into non-financial investment grade bonds, while increasing the pace of acquisition to €80bn per month. The ECB also promised to pay the banks to take credit from it in "targeted longer-term refinancing operations". Any Frenchman with a knowledge of his country's history should hear alarm bells ringing. The ECB is running the Eurozone's money and assets in a similar fashion to that of John Law's Banque Generale Privée (renamed Banque Royale in 1719), which ran those of France in 1716-20. The scheme at its heart was simple: use the money-issuing monopoly granted to the bank by the state to drive up the value of the Mississippi Company's shares using paper money created for the purpose. The Duc d'Orleans, regent of France for the young Louis XV, agreed to the scheme because it would provide the Bourbons with much-needed funds. This is pretty much what the ECB is doing today, except on a far larger Eurozone-wide basis. The need for government funds is of primary importance today, as it was then. In Law's day, France did not have a central bank, such as the Bank of England, managing the issue of government debt, let alone a functioning government bond market. The profligate spending of Louis XIV had left the state three billion livres in debt, which was the equivalent of 1,840 tonnes of gold. This was about 85% of the world's estimated gold stock at that time, at the livre's conversion rate into Louis d'Or. John Law would almost double that by June 1720, with unbacked livre notes issued by his bank. Today, the assets being overvalued for the governments' benefit are government bonds themselves, but the principal is the same. There is no need to use a separate, Mississippi-style vehicle, because there is a fully functioning government bond market. Banque Generale created the bank credit for France's upper and middle classes to buy Mississippi Company shares, driving up the price and making yet higher prices a certainty. Law had set up a money-making machine for those with a modicum of wealth, but the ten per cent down-payment required to subscribe for Mississippi shares made speculation available to the servant classes as well. The result was virtually everyone in Paris was caught up in the speculative fever, and Mississippi shares increased from the 15 livres deposit to 18,000 livres fully paid at the peak in June 1720. The term "millionaire" dated from that time. Today, the ECB is doing things a little differently, creating money to buy government bonds from the banks, enabling governments to continue to spend without the threat of a funding crisis. Basel III banking regulations, which exempt banks from having to apply a risk weighting to government bonds, ensures that the bonds are also in great demand as collateral, further guaranteeing that the banks will continue to buy them. However, in common with Law's scheme, the ECB needs new suckers all the time to keep the market from stalling, so the ECB is extending the scheme beyond sovereign debt by buying up investment grade bonds as well. And since it can conjure up money out of thin air, it will also pay the commercial banks interest to borrow from it, ensuring the yields on all bonds purchased with this finance will continue to fall in line with negative interest rates. As was surely the case in 1720, the expansion of credit is commonly believed to be a very good thing, as necessary for the welfare of the Eurozone states today as it was for France three hundred years ago. But don't be fooled. For the scheme to continue, more credit has to be issued, and more bonds bought to stop the bond bubble from deflating. That is the real reason behind the ECB's action. And because it cannot be continued for ever, that is why ultimately the bubble will pop. The Mississippi bubble came to an end when France ran out of sufficient buyers to keep it inflating. There always comes a point where the temptation to cash in some profit to buy those other things long desired, such as a country estate and a smart Paris residence, becomes too great to resist. And when the Mississippi bubble lost its mojo, the selling escalated. By late 1720, the Banque Royale, as it had been renamed, faced angry note-holders unable to redeem them for specie. Once the run started, the whole scam rapidly imploded. It seems extraordinary that in economics, wishful thinking trumps reasoned analysis and common sense so often. The fallacies that have brought the ECB to implement its delusional policies are broadly the same as those in which John Law believed. In both cases, they started by assuming that the state has a duty to ensure money and credit are freely available, unchaining the population from the constraints of free markets. In both cases, their beliefs inevitably adjusted as a result of problems that subsequently arise as the by-products of monetary expansion. And in both cases, yet further monetary expansion then became the only solution to apply as a cure-all for the problems themselves. Unsound money has come to be deployed simply to keep bankrupt governments going. We should put to one side all other reasons, justifications and excuses for what has happened, because it was the French state that employed Law to run its bank, and the Eurozone governments that created the ECB. The servant always serves the master. Banque Royale succumbed to a run, while the ECB is still nursing a banking system, that on a reversal of the asset bubble, will almost certainly collapse. In this respect, the ECB is not quite at the Banque Royale's tipping point, but it is edging closer. Everyone in the Eurozone believes that the ECB is all-powerful, because to believe otherwise is unthinkable. This was also true of Banque Royale, until it faltered. It was not a loss of confidence in the bank that was responsible for the collapse, it happened as a result of the difficulties encountered in sustaining the bubble. The lesson is that it need not take a loss of confidence in the ECB to start its destruction. Let's imagine for a moment, that the bond-market bubble ends and prices start to normalise. We know that it won't take much to create losses that will wipe out the capital of some critically important commercial banks, but we like to think the ECB is on top of this problem. Very few people seem to be are aware of the crisis that falling bond prices would create for the ECB itself. The ECB's equity capital at 31 December 2015 was €7.74bn, supporting a balance sheet of €256.645bn, a gearing ratio of over 33 times. The wider euro-system's accounts, where the asset purchases accumulate, has capital and reserves of €98bn supporting a balance sheet of €2,872bn, a gearing ratio of 29 times and rising. As a rough guide, an interest rate increase of less than two per cent, to as little as one and a half per cent, would undermine the value of bonds and related risks at both the ECB and in the euro-system, to the point where they would require further capital injections. For some context, if the yield to maturity on a five-year bond rises by 2%, the price falls roughly 10%. Now we are getting to the truth as to why the ECB's debt bubble must be sustained. It is no longer to support economic growth. A deflating asset bubble will take down the ECB and the wider euro-system, just as the Mississippi bubble took down Banque Royale. And in both cases, the confidence vested in these institutions is reflected in the purchasing power of the money they have issued. It may not be long before foreign holders of euros begin to visualise Mr Draghi in a full-bottomed wig, lace jabot and long velvet coat. Their problem will be looking for safety, because the ghosts of eighteenth-century monetary economists can also be imagined at the helm of the other major central banks. In John Law's day, the solution was simple, as the private banker, Richard Cantillon showed. He cashed in early, selling livres for gold. Cantillon, who was the equivalent of today's investment banker, not only punted the Mississippi bubble successfully, but he loaned large quantities of fiat livres to the wealthy in Paris, taking in Mississippi stock as collateral. Before the crash, he had the prescience to sell all his own stock for gold. It is said that he also secretly sold all the collateral he had had pledged to him, again settling for gold. Cantillon then removed himself across the border to Italy with his stash of Louis d'Or to await developments. After the crash, he returned, and demanded repayment of the outstanding debts from his clients. Cantillon probably became the richest commoner in history, and immensely unpopular in Paris to boot. Rather like the investment bankers of today, he made his fortune while nearly everyone else was impoverished. We cannot say for sure what will trigger the end for the ECB and the euro. It could be a member state, like Italy, Spain or even France, running into financial or political trouble. It could be the threatened break-up of the European Union, if the Brexit polls swing in favour of Britain leaving, and the blow that it would impart to European unity. The Muslim immigration problem is often cited as a threat to the European project. It could be developments on the other side of the world, perhaps China driving up commodity prices, leading to future price inflation in the Eurozone, so leaving Eurozone bond markets exposed to the threat of rising interest rates. Equally, it might not be an identifiable event. Rather like the Mississippi scam, it could end when the Eurozone's bond markets just run out of steam. |
| Donald Trump's Full Rousing Speech AIPAC Policy Conference (3-21-16) Posted: 21 Mar 2016 04:21 PM PDT Monday, March 21, 2016: GOP Presidential candidate Donald Trump spoke at the annual AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington, DC and gave a rousing speech. LIVE Stream: Donald Trump Speaks at AIPAC Policy Conference (3-21-16) The Financial Armageddon Economic Collapse Blog tracks trends and... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit http://www.newsbooze.com or http://www.figanews.com for full links, other content, and more! ]]  |
| GREAT INTERVIEW The Economic Collapse Accelerating Events Disclosures Jim Willie 2016 Posted: 21 Mar 2016 04:01 PM PDT GREAT INTERVIEW The Economic Collapse Accelerating Events Disclosures Jim Willie 2016 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! ]]  |
| Silver Eagle Sales To Jump 25% Due To Deteriorating Market Conditions Posted: 21 Mar 2016 03:01 PM PDT
Silver Eagle sales will likely jump by 25% in the first quarter due to deteriorating market conditions. During the first three months last year the U.S. Mint sold 12 million Silver Eagles. Already, sales of Silver Eagles have reached 13 million. There are two weeks remaining in March and the U.S. Mint will likely sell another two million. |
| Clearing the Field and Realigning American Politics Posted: 21 Mar 2016 01:54 PM PDT This post Clearing the Field and Realigning American Politics appeared first on Daily Reckoning. It's actually pretty easy. At an apt moment very soon, Trump should offer Governor Kasich the VP slot and Senator Cruz the vacant Supreme Court seat. Such a grand bargain would not only clear the primary field and quash any backroom hijacking of the nomination by the Washington GOP establishment; it would also permit each man to play his highest and best role at this great inflection point in the nation's history. That is, Donald Trump's job is to destroy the Republican/Neocon establishment and bring working class America back into a modern version of a McKinley-style Republican Party. Ted Cruz' task is to spend a lifetime bringing strict constructionism back to the high court, thereby helping to restore constitutional restraints on a leviathan state that fundamentally threatens personal liberty and economic freedom and prosperity in America. And, yes, there really isn't much for a washed-out, me-too Republican pol like Kasich to do at all. Except to get out of the way and exercise his apparent talent for preacherly uplift as America's eulogist-in-chief at foreign state funerals. Beyond the rightness of it, there's some pretty potent logic for the politics of the deal, too, There would be lots of of winners all around—–most especially the long-suffering American people. Mitch McConnell and his rudderless Senate wheels, for example, would not need even a ten minute caucus to hand down to young Ted Cruz a life sentence to the Supreme Court. At the same time and more importantly, however, the American public would score a twofer——a more faithful high court and one less warmonger on Capitol Hill. As to the former, Ted Cruz is about as close to the next Antonin Scalia as exists in America today. It goes without saying that he could do far more for the cause of liberty as a Justice than as a gadfly Senator. But there is an angle even more important. Cruz was a top student and debater at Princeton, a distinguished editor of the Harvard Law Review and a clerk on both the DC Court of Appeals and for the great Justice William Rehnquist on the Supreme Court. During the primary debates, he erudition on constitutional matters towered far above the pack. He was also described as "off the charts brilliant" by no less an admirer of his own brilliance than Alan Dershowitz. With a prospective long lifetime of service on the high court, Ted Cruz could bring a level of scholarly narrative and intellectual passion and acumen that is sorely needed by the constitutionalist cause. At the same time, the American people would be spared of another bellicose politician hell-bent on extending Washington's imperial depredations. Cruz seems to have the Ronald Reagan disease. That is, his belief in small government does not extend to the Pentagon side of the Potomac; and his high regard for liberty does not appear to encompass innocent foreigners dwelling in the vicinity of desert sands he would cause to glow in the dark. As for Kasich, it is hard to think of a more inapt messenger with a more wrong-headed message. America does not need another compromiser, reconciler and wizened Washington ranch hand who can split the difference. It needs, instead, a force of nature who can rain shock and awe on the Imperial City. And, so doing, overturn its vast network of prosperous racketeers who feed off the military industrial complex, the health care cartel, the education monopolies, the Wall Street and banking mafias and the legions of other crony capitalist rackets. Governor Kasich's specious claim to be a fiscally prudent budget balancer is especially telling. One of the most outrageous Washington wastes is right under his nose. Namely, the Lima Ohio M-1 tank line that he and the Ohio politicians keep open despite 10,000 such lethal machines already in inventory——-and notwithstanding that no other nation has tanks of this advanced capability or, more dispositively, the means to land them on these shores. Actually, M-1 tanks were originally designed to fight the Red Army on the central front——said army and said front having disappeared from the pages of history 25 years ago. Since then they have been used for neocon wars of invasion and occupation that did nothing for the safety and security of citizens in Dayton OH or Danbury CT except foster vengeful blowback in the cities and towns they turned into rubble. Even then, the Imperial City's racketeers offered this folly as proof of the need for more iron and electronic monsters from Lima, while Kasich and his pols lip-synched the sales pitch. In truth, Kasich is exactly the kind of political lifer that needs to occupy the Joe Biden chair of policy irrelevance during the monumental reckoning ahead. He has indulged in double talk for so many decades that he no longer even knows when his lips are synching or even moving. His victory speech after the Ohio primary, for example, was laced with pious rhetoric about devolving government back to the states and localities. C'mon. He took a 90% bribe from Obama to drastically expand Medicaid in Ohio at the expense of taxpayers in Idaho and Texas, whose faithful governors didn't. Yet he has the nerve to call himself a champion of decentralization? Kasich's brand of phony Federalism goes back to Nelson Rockefeller, who wore thin the patience of New York taxpayers with his out-sized building, spending and other notorious appetites. So looking enviously at the untapped citizens of Nebraska and Oregon, Rocky then cooked-up the idea of revenue sharing and sold it to Nixon. It was actually just a form of interstate larceny. As a young Capitol Hill staffer at the time, I saw how the old-fashioned conservative and legendary ruler of the House Ways and Means Committee, Wilbur Mills, had it killed dead as a doornail. His was virtually the last voice of authority and power in Washington during the past half century who insisted that such tax monies should never leave home in the first place; and that the round-trip through Washington was just an opportunity for sticky fingers to skim the pot and for disingenuous politicians to bring home the pork while pretending it was free money. If they want to spend it, said Mills, let them tax it first. But sound Federalism was not to be. LBJ's Great Society had broken the dam and soon Wilbur Mills stumbled into submission on the eve of the 1972 Nixon landslide——perhaps in a foreshadowing of his final stumble two years later into the Tidal Basin with Fanne Foxe. The rest, as they say, is history. With Mills' iconic defense of the old order out of the way, the Nixon-Ford White House massively expanded the Federal grant-in-aid system. At length, a whole generation of GOP politicians became house-trained in Kasich style fiscal doublespeak and hypocrisy.That is, in the art of decrying Washington's fiscal profligacy on the rubber chicken circuit by night while devoting their day jobs to scrapping for hometown pork from Medicaid and thousands of like and similar Federal gravy trains. I have no idea whether Donald Trump will see through this Kasich style fiscal hypocrisy or not. But I do believe him when he decries our $19 trillion national debt and when he says that he is going after Washington's fiscal profligacy with hammer and tongs. In this instance, and much else, Trump's principal virtue is that his only acquaintanceship with the Imperial City is attendance at an occasional Kennedy Center gala. Accordingly, Trump is unschooled in the self-serving rationalizations that keep the rackets going, even as he is endowed with such ample self-confidence that he is sure to go charging into the nation's fiscal mess like a bull in a china shop. And that's much to be welcomed after years of a bipartisan conspiracy of silence and Washington's perfidiously orchestrated regime of fiscal can-kicking. Broken furniture and bombastic challenges are exactly what the fiscal doctor ordered. Indeed, what a President Trump could actually do is prove that the way to shutdown Washington's budgetary rackets is by means of an insurrectionist-in-chief inside the White House, not furtive threats to close the Washington Monument lobbed down Pennsylvania Avenue from Capitol Hill. Say what you will about Trump's controversial business history, the four bankruptcies and the rest. Yet it is absolutely certain that he knows at least this much: You don't stop a flood of budgetary red ink with a 25-year plan to get to a balanced budget by 2038! That's Speaker Paul Ryan's particular contribution to the GOP establishments' noxious form of fiscal duplicity and doublespeak. Like in the movie "Dave", The Donald is likely to dive into the budget himself and then there will be fear and trembling all around the Imperial City. Big Pharma and the health insurance cartel are already in Trump's gun sights, but once he gets to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue he will quickly discover the target rich environment on the Pentagon side of the Potomac, too. The hideously expensive, technically plagued and completely unneeded trillion dollar F-35 fighter would be the ideal place for him to start. And that goes to the larger point. All the swells in the mainstream media are furiously cackling about The Donald's answer on morning TV about the identity of his top foreign policy advisors. Yet the apparent fact that he has none and is doing his own thinking is why the think tanks and neocon lobbies are in full frontal panic: I'm speaking with myself No. 1 because I have a very good brain and I've said a lot of things," he said in an interview on MSNBC. "I talk to a lot of people and at the appropriate time I'll tell you who the people are." Actually, there is more, and it has to do with one of the many character flaws that self-evidently afflict the man. We speak of his monumental capacity to carry a grudge and seek revenge upon those who personally offend him. Here's the thing. Mitt Romney's viscous public attack on Trump is only the beard. It is merely the censored for-family-TV-version of what the entire neocon establishment and War Party is saying every day in the corridors of Imperial Washington. Needless to say, the Donald is taking names and will not be reluctant to do far more than kick offending posteriors. He will make it his business to hound, denounce, denigrate and dispatch the entire passel of neocon power brokers who have declared war on his candidacy. And, yes, an Imperial City purged of Bill Kristol and his gang of bloodthirsty provocateurs would already be on the road to redemption. Indeed, if America's foreign policy could be seized from the grasp of the Washington War Party and its AIPAC subsidiary, the fiscal equation would be instantly transformed. Over and again, Trump seems to grasp that the real security of the homeland has nothing to do with being the world's policeman and defense sugar-daddy. In fact, that's pretty obvious to any one who hasn't been mis-educated by globe-trotting harpies of war like Senators Lindsay Graham and John McCain. Trump has had no trouble figuring out that Ukraine, for example, was always part of the greater Russian sphere of influence and geographic propinquity. If he had time for an honest briefing, he surely would have no problem at all seeing that it was the meddling, incompetent apparatchiks of the State Department, CIA and National Endowment for Democracy which fostered, funded and facilitated the coup against the constitutionally elected government of Ukraine in the first place. Or that Crimea was the equivalent of a Gadsden Purchase which had been unwound by Kruschev in the midst of post-Stalin politburo maneuvers and intrigues; and that its re-annexation by Moscow after the illegal putsch in Kiev was accomplished far more peacefully and consensually than had been the territorial rearrangement of Kosovo by the US Air Force 15 year earlier. But whether he has had all the true facts or not, Trump has had no trouble seeing that the solution to the conflict between Ukraine's Russian speaking minority in the east and the rest of the country was a negotiated deal with Putin, not the demonization of this leader of a country that has no beef with America and a GDP the size of the NYC metropolitan area. You can go from that insight straight to a $200 billion cut in the nation's bloated $600 billion defense budget. When the US economy slides into recession, as it surely will, before the next White House inaugural ceremony has commenced, the Federal deficit will soar back above the $1 trillion mark; it has only been in temporary hibernation, not permanent remission. So The Donald will need massive spending cuts in Washington at the very same time that desperate socialist governments in Europe will face a global recession induced outbreak of red ink in their own fiscal accounts. That will be the Donald's moment——the opening to disband NATO, slash defense spending across both continents and negotiate the kind of global disarmament deals that Eisenhower unsuccessfully sought and Warren G. Harding actually achieved. And that brings us to the supreme irony of this fraught political season. The Washington and New York chattering class has been nearly busting a spleen over the prospect of Trump's (alleged) stubby fingers on the nuclear button. I haven't heard such full-throated hysteria since they worked up a similar campaign against Ronald Reagan in the fall of 1980. The man did go on to help end the cold war and remove the nuclear sword of Damocles that hung over the planet, even if it was the inherent contradictions and impossibilities of totalitarian socialism that finally brought down the Soviet regime. Likewise, in a world heading into the fiscal dumpster, Donald Trump is more likely to negotiate an end to today's monumental waste on arms and thereby win the Nobel Peace Prize than he is to start a war. Stated differently, Trump can lead the world back to the 1991 status quo ante for one salient reason. He never got the War Party memo that proclaimed an American Imperium that has now failed horribly; and he will relish doing unstinting battle against it Imperial City architects——the Clintons and the neocons. Still, redemption for the US economy and the nation's wage and salary earning households will require more than the recovery of fiscal rectitude, as crucial as that is to avoiding a calamitous national bankruptcy during the next decade. What is actually needed is a modern rendition of President William McKinley's "full dinner pail" economics of circa 1900. McKinley was a hard money Republican who impaled William Jennings Bryan twice on his own cross of anti-gold populism by selling the gospel of free enterprise and mild protectionism to the laboring classes of America's flourishing interior. Donald Trump is on to that. But what he needs to better understand is that it was the gold standard and free enterprise elements of the McKinley formula that carried the day, not the moderately protectionist tariffs. The latter had actually been designed a decade earlier by McKinley himself as an Ohio industrial belt Congressman to insure wage equivalence with the principal industrial centers of England and Europe. In fact, it was the honest money discipline of the gold standard that kept transatlantic industrial wages in equilibrium, consumer goods inflation non-existent and real living standards steadily rising. Stumping for the protectionist tariff was just the McKinley GOP's way of emphasizing its solidarity with the wage earning producers of the day. To be sure, free trade is always better for real living standards and societal wealth than the deadweight cost of tariffs, but in truth the McKinley tariff was as much a revenue tariff as it was an modern style instrument of statist protectionism. After all, it was not until 1913 that the nation even had an income tax on individuals and corporations. And that gets us to a segue to The Donald's well-intended but incomplete stance on global trade, the massive loss of full-pay productive jobs in America during recent decades and his claim that we are "losing" $500 billion a year to China, $59 billion to Mexico and so forth. He is right. But it's not just, or even mainly, due to bad trade deals negotiated by stupid bureaucrats in the state department and the USTR office. It's mainly owing to bad money created by stupid Keynesians at the Federal Reserve. They have enabled the rise of a virulent form of export mercantilism and currency manipulation throughout the entirety of East Asia and much of the EM world which drafts in its economic wake. Stated differently, the two decade long regime of central bank driven free money has destroyed the possibility of free trade. What passes for "free trade" today has nothing to do with the real thing. So-called free trade arrangements like NAFTA and the pending TPP are essentially statist deals negotiated among corporate, labor, environmentalist and other interest groups. If they actually result in increased global trade, the impact is marginal and largely incidental. The whole trade calamity that Trump is declaiming goes back four and one-half decades; and can be laid at the doorstep of Milton Friedman and his acolytes in the White House who convinced Nixon to default on America's obligation to redeem unwanted dollars for gold, and to instead float the dollar at Camp David in August 1971. What the well-intended but hopelessly naïve free market professor failed to reckon with is that once the Fed was freed of the shackles of even the flawed Bretton Woods gold exchange standard, it would only be a matter of time before statist professors and Washington policy apparatchiks would open the monetary floodgates in the name of taming the business cycle or achieving the mythical Keynesian nirvana of full-employment. Worse still, Friedman was clueless about the probability that this monetary profligacy would prove to be virulently contagious, especially among the developing economies of East Asia where free market capitalism had never really existed. What happened is a relentless, long-lasting and destructive "dirty float" that continues to this day. The recipients of the Fed's flood of dollar liabilities after Greenspan took the helm in 1987 engaged in massive currency intervention and manipulation in order to promote their export industries, and avoid what would have otherwise happened under Friedman's theoretical fiat money regime. To wit, the dollar would have collapsed and Asian exporter exchange rates would have soared, halting America's 25 year borrowing spree before it really got started. The truth is, had Alan Greenspan and his successors maintained even a modicum of monetary restraint and permitted money and capital markets to clear under the laws of supply and demand, nominal US interest rates would have remained unusually high in the face of deep negative US trade balances stemming from the post-1994 mobilization of cheap labor in China and East Asia. American |
| Why the Rally in Stocks Can’t Be Trusted Posted: 21 Mar 2016 01:29 PM PDT This post Why the Rally in Stocks Can’t Be Trusted appeared first on Daily Reckoning.
BALTIMORE – The Dow rose the fifth week in a row last week, ending with a 120-point jump on Friday. This has put the index firmly in the black for 2016. Well, this is a showdown, isn't it? Either us… or the great mass of investors – one of us is wrong. In the weeks to come, we'll find out who. (Notice to new readers: It could go either way.) Everything Is NonsenseWait a minute… Our old friend Rob Marstrand, who writes at OfWealth.com, explains why the great mass of investors has little to do with it. Apparently, corporations have nothing better to do with their money than buy their own shares.
It's an Alice in Wonderland world. Everything is nonsense. Stocks are going up. That should mean things are looking up for business. Which should mean that companies have plenty of worthwhile new capital investments to make – new machinery, new factories, new products, and more distribution. And if things are looking up for business, it should mean things are looking up for their employees. More jobs. Higher wages. And since stock prices are not far from record highs – after clawing their way back up the mountain over the last five weeks – it must mean that things are looking up all over, right? Rats! We're All Mad Here…Time is the ultimate unyielding human resource. And the ultimate measure of how wealthy a society is how much you can get paid per hour. Cometh another depressing report for millennials from conservative website Red Alert Politics:
Not that we're going to whine on behalf of the young. They're doing their own whining at the ballot box. The youngest voters are going for the oldest candidate: democratic socialist Bernie Sanders. But what entertains us today is the nonsense of the entire system. "We're all mad here," says Wonderland's Cheshire Cat… perhaps anticipating Janet Yellen's Fed. Actually, the whole system is not just mad. It is also corrupt and phony. A Phony SystemIt begins with PHONY MONEY. Dollars are supposed to represent wealth. How do you get wealth? By working, investing, and saving, right? But after 1971 – when President Nixon ended the direct convertibility of dollars to gold – the Fed created new dollars with no wealth backing them. Post-1971 dollars are IOUs from Uncle Sam, nothing more. The Fed carries them on its books as a liability. Then there is the problem of PHONY SAVINGS. In a healthy economy, you earn money, and you save part of it. This can be lent out, as credit, to fund new projects and earn interest. Savings – and credit – are limited. They are based on real surplus wealth. But in today's mad system, central banks and banks create credit out of thin air… using nothing but keystrokes on a computer. No savings are needed. Savers might as well not bother. Thanks to the Fed's regime of ultra-low interest rates, over the past 10 years, Bloomberg estimates that about $8 trillion has been confiscated from savers – money they should have earned in interest. On top of this, the government has a PHONY FISCAL POLICY. It borrows phony money from banks in return for Treasury bonds. Under QE, the Fed then buys these bonds from the banks. The Treasury then pays the Fed interest on these bonds… the Fed then gives this interest back to the Treasury. Neat, huh? It's free money for the feds. They borrow nothing for nothing… and everyone pretends it's real. This is all made possible by PHONY MONETARY POLICY. The Fed sets interest rates at the lowest levels in history. So borrowers – especially the largest borrower in history, the U.S. government – can get funds cheaply. This is done to strengthen the economy, but the economy grows weaker under the burden of so much more debt. Corrupt and FraudulentThis all leads to a PHONY STOCK MARKET, in which corporate bosses use the cheap money to loot their own businesses. Companies borrow heavily to buy back their own shares and cancel them. This increases the earnings per share of the outstanding shares, boosting their value. Top execs then collect fat bonuses based on rising share prices. Shareholders get a temporary boost as their stocks go up, but their businesses are weakened by the additional debt. And the entire system creates PHONY WEALTH. This is not capitalism. It's phony, crony capitalism. Its phony money leads to phony investments – short-term speculations… scams… and rent seeking. These do not build real wealth; they extract real wealth from the rest of the economy and shift it to the well-connected sectors. Here's how it works in housing, for example. The banks get the phony money and lend it to house buyers. They collect interest on "money" that cost them next to nothing. Naturally, they lend more and more… in order to maximize their own income. This leads to rising house prices… and eventually, a bust, when too many people own too much money on houses they can't really afford. This is what happened in 2007. Home buyers couldn't make their payments. Home prices fell. Families lost their homes. And then, even the banks were in trouble. So, the Fed came and bailed out the banks, so the extraction could continue. And today, almost every one of America's taxpayers continues to make payments to the credit industry – for student loans, housing loans, auto loans, credit cards – transferring more and more real wealth from the people who earned it to the privileged elite. But it is not just Wall Street that comes out ahead. The entire Deep State complex is at the heart of the nonsensical, corrupt, and fraudulent system… Expecting the Mad Hatter to protect you? Or the Cheshire Cat? Good luck with that! Regards, Bill Bonner 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 Why the Rally in Stocks Can’t Be Trusted appeared first on Daily Reckoning. |
| Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Silver Shows More Staying Power Than Gold Posted: 21 Mar 2016 01:19 PM PDT |
| TF Metals Report: Bullion bank desperation and motive Posted: 21 Mar 2016 01:11 PM PDT 4:15p ET Monday, March 21, 2016 Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: Bullion banks last week seemed especially desperate to drive speculative money out of gold, the TF Metal Report's Turd Ferguson writes today. While he writes that the bullion banks also seem firmly in control of gold futures, he adds that the effort is requiring ever more paper creation from them and that another price smashing is not necessarily imminent. Ferguson's analysis is headlined "Bullion Bank Desperation and Motive" and it is posted at the TF Metals Report here: http://www.tfmetalsreport.com/blog/7518/bullion-bank-desperation-and-mot... CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer 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. Join GATA here: Mines and Money Asia http://asia.minesandmoney.com/ Mining Investment Asia http://www.mininginvestmentasia.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 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: |
| DOW JONES vs SILVER: Trading Volume Says It All Posted: 21 Mar 2016 11:26 AM PDT SRSRocco Report |
| Posted: 21 Mar 2016 10:32 AM PDT The War On Cash Is Real! |
| Oil and the Curious Case of the FOMO “Disease” Posted: 21 Mar 2016 09:08 AM PDT This post Oil and the Curious Case of the FOMO "Disease" appeared first on Daily Reckoning. One of my readers, Keith H., recently sent me the following question: "There has been A LOT of positive movement in Oil & Gas stocks in the past couple of weeks. Will your system tell us when it is time to buy Oil & Gas stocks, like you just did with the gold stocks?" I want to answer that question here because I think many other readers will be wondering the same thing. But before I answer the question, I have to address something super critical. Based on Keith's questions, I think he could be suffering from a "disease" called FOMO. Keith, don't take this the wrong way. All investors suffer from this "disease." It's our human nature. FOMO simply means "fear of missing out." What are the main symptoms? It starts with our lizard brain… and that frequently provokes feelings of anxiety and restlessness. If you suffer from FOMO, you're probably thinking that others experience more pleasure, success, or fulfillment than you. It doesn't really work that way, even if we feel that way. Let's dig into the recent oil rally, for example. Keith is right about the positive movement in energy stocks. Over the past month, crude oil is up about 50%, and energy stocks are up about 18%. Many people that have missed this recent rally are cursing themselves: "Damn, everyone is getting rich from this oil rally but me. I better jump in now." But keep in mind… this 50% rise in the price of oil after such a massive drop skews our thinking. For example, if a stock goes from 10 to 1 and then rises 50% where are we? See how the perspective changes the thinking? That's why FOMO is so insidious, so dangerous. It makes you get into trades at the wrong time, often right before the trend reverses. Think how about many lemmings bought tech stocks at the zenith of the market in 2000 because of the fear of missing out on the Nasdaq going even higher. Think about how many people were flipping houses in 2006 because of the fear of missing out on easy housing money. Investment decisions based on emotions almost always end in chaos. So how do you cure yourself from the dreaded and paralyzing FOMO condition? And, getting back to Keith's question, is it finally time to buy energy stocks? Are Energy Stocks Going to the Moon? No One Knows After such a wham bam thank you ma'am rally, it's normal for investors to think that we've seen the bottom and oil is headed to $200 a barrel. But if you do a little research online, you'll find conflicting views. For example, the Russian Central Bank, which is praying for oil to go up, says the oil rally is unsustainable. It recently warned: "The current oil market still features a continued oversupply, on the backdrop of a slowdown in the Chinese economy, more supplies originating from Iran and tighter competition for market share. This is why the certain recovery in crude prices seen in the recent weeks may prove to be unsustainable." The Russian central bank is not alone. Goldman Sachs, for example, recently issued a note saying this recent oil and commodity rally is unsustainable. They say there is too much oil, and oversupply will keep prices low for some time. Further, many energy companies won't earn a profit unless oil gets back to $50. With oil still below $50, one-third of U.S. oil producers could go bankrupt this year, according to The Wall Street Journal. This wave of bankruptcies could trigger another leg down in oil stocks. In other words, there's no guarantee oil will go back to $100 a barrel and energy stocks will go to the moon. Does that mean it's guaranteed that oil will head back to $30 or even lower? Not at all. If I'm confusing you, that's because that's what fundamental analysis does. It confuses. Big time. The Only Cure for FOMO See, the Russian Central Bank, Goldman Sachs and the Wall Street Journal are just issuing opinions based on their version of predictive fundamental analysis. They could be totally wrong. They could be totally right. Feel like you just landed at Vegas Friday at midnight ready to hit the craps tables? Exactly. Me too. Instead of relying on asinine bank opinions typically designed so they can just pull more fees from your account, I want you on a different path. Just follow the trend up or down. This will also automatically eliminate your FOMO. If you're using a trend following system, like the one we use in Trend Following with Michael Covel, there's no need for emotions, guessing, checking with CNBC, runs to the toilet, calling uncle Harry, checking Janet Yellen's pantsuit color or any other ludicrous piece of data. Instead of focusing on could-be, would-be and should-be, you focus on what is right now. So, what is the trend in oil and energy stocks right now based on the price action?
The chart above shows the performance of the Energy Select Sector ETF, which tracks the performance of energy stocks. And it's clear the sector has had a big rally. Despite that, both crude oil and energy stocks remain in a long-term downtrend according to my system. If the rally continues, the price action alone could change that analysis. But you have to get to the "buy" signal first. You don't jump the signal. Great investing is patience. No signal, no long position in oil or oil related markets–yet. Please send me your comments to coveluncensored@agorafinancial.com. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Please tell me exactly what you think. Don't sugar coat it! Regards, Michael Covel The post Oil and the Curious Case of the FOMO "Disease" appeared first on Daily Reckoning. |
| Oil, Gold, The Collapse of Central Banking ~ Interview with Chris Martenson 21 March 2016 Posted: 21 Mar 2016 08:11 AM PDT Oil, Gold, The Collapse of Central Banking ~ Interview with Chris Martenson 21 March 2016 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! ]]  |
| Silver – A Long-Term Perspective Posted: 21 Mar 2016 08:06 AM PDT We all know silver is volatile. When gold rallies, silver usually rallies faster and farther, particularly after the rally has been well established. Volatility is not a reason to avoid silver. Instead, now is a time to continue stacking. Yes, silver almost certainly will correct many times, but examine the big picture. Over the past 50 years prices for stocks, silver, gold, crude oil, health care, and presidential elections have increased exponentially, mainly due to massive increases in debt (see graph below) and devaluations of currencies. Expect exponential price increases to continue. |
| Gold Silver Ratio Says It’s Time to Buy Silver, Sell Gold Posted: 21 Mar 2016 07:56 AM PDT Silver remains undervalued versus gold and the gold silver ratio suggests “selling the former” and “buying the latter” according to a Bloomberg article published today. |
| Silver Price About to Slump Lower Posted: 21 Mar 2016 05:56 AM PDT Whilst silver had a good week last week, outperforming gold and rising to multi-month new high, it looks like that may have been its "swan song" for a while. It looks quite positive at first sight on its latest 6-month chart with the new high and moving averages starting to swing into a more positive alignment, but once you "look under the hood" you quickly realize things are not so good at all. |
| Posted: 21 Mar 2016 05:52 AM PDT All the technical evidence suggests that gold is building out an intermediate top area here, which fits with the fundamental situation where complacency and "risk on" are making a comeback, thanks to the boundless generosity of Central Bankers. Starting with gold's 6-month chart we see that after its parabolic ramp up in January and early February, it has been struggling to make further progress. The supposed (by some) bull Flag or Pennant turned out to be false and although it has edged ahead a little, the passage of time has resulted in its breaking down from the parabola simply by moving sideways, which has, unknown to many, opened up the risk of a potentially severe drop. The most plausible interpretation of pattern development since the parabolic blowoff spike in early - mid February is that it is a bearish Rising Wedge, which the price broke down from about a week ago, before a backtest of the breakdown point with the big up day last Wednesday when the Fed didn't raise rates, which triggered panic short covering. |
Americans have painful recollections of how allowing ratings agencies to take Wall Street money and dole out bogus triple-A ratings on subprime mortgages tanked the U.S. housing market in the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression. They fully understand that the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision that opened the floodgates to pay-to-play corporate financing of elections has grotesquely disfigured participatory democracy in America. Now they're about to learn how America's "free press" is able to be bought – literally.
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