Gold World News Flash

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• Commodity Technical Analysis: Gold Probes Lows before Closing Near High of Day
• The 12 Gold Bugs of Christmas
• What is Gold?
• Gold And Japanese Reflation
• What In The World Are Barack Obama And John Boehner Thinking?
• Turk - Anti-Gold Propaganda Won’t Stop Monetary Destruction
• Unusual price action in gold and silver, USD, oil, QE4
• GoldSeek.com TV: Gold Confiscation? Will the Chinese Yuan replace the US Dollar? An interview with Julian Phillips
• Physical = Life, Paper = Death
• Euro Yen Cross – Redux
• Jeff Gundlach On The Fiscal Cliff Circus And Why Investors Should Hold Cash Through 2013
• More Un-Predictions: Deutsche's 13 Outliers For '13
• Central Bank Insurance
• My Boomer Life and the Greatest Generation Parents Who Raised Me
• Louise Yamada: Why Gold Could Soon Fall to $1,600
• NO COMPROMISE.
• MATT TAIBBI ON HSBC
• Abe 2.0 Begins - Step 1 Remove All Budget Limits; JGB Yields Crack
• David Morgan & Alan Butler talk SILVER – YouTube
• Marc Faber’s Beliefs About Gold
• Berlusconi: "Italy May Be Forced To Leave The Eurozone And Return To The Lira"
• 'Capital Account' program with GATA's Murphy and Powell posted at SilverSeek
• Geithner was told of Libor fears in 2008
• James Turk: Auditors, not queen, should have visited Bank of England gold vault
• The Gold & Silver Price Dipped Today
• Safe Havens Jettisoned
• The Gold Price Closed Down at $1,669.50 and so I Bought Today
• Is There a Best Way to Return to a Gold Standard?
• Bernanke: Gold’s BFF
• Gold Seeker Closing Report: Gold and Silver Fall Almost 2%
• Euro Yen Cross - Redux
• Bernanke: Gold's BFF
• The New Cold War
• Confiscation of Gold – Then What? (Part 2/4)
• Net Asset Value Premiums Of Certain Precious Metal Trusts and Funds

Commodity Technical Analysis: Gold Probes Lows before Closing Near High of Day Posted: 19 Dec 2012 12:07 AM PST courtesy of DailyFX.com December 18, 2012 03:56 PM Daily Bars Chart Prepared by Jamie Saettele, CMT Commodity Analysis: “Viewed in light of the 3 wave advance from 1672.50, the trend is lower.” Today’s breakdown confirms the bearish suspicions. Continue to look lower from the current levels towards a Fibonacci confluence, former resistance, and channel support that cluster near 1630. Commodity Trading Strategy: The most bearish count is valid against 1703. Shorts against that level are warranted. LEVELS: 1641 1673 1685 1711 1723 1727...

The 12 Gold Bugs of Christmas Posted: 19 Dec 2012 12:00 AM PST Casey Research

What is Gold? Posted: 18 Dec 2012 11:35 PM PST Let's take a poll. What is gold? Is it money, currency, an investment or wealth? For clarity, I'll give you my definitions of each with links to some of the posts in which I've used these terms. Money is credit (i.e., it is the way the economy uses credit balances to lubricate the flow of tradable goods and services). Currency is what denominates money. It is often issued or at least

Gold And Japanese Reflation Posted: 18 Dec 2012 11:35 PM PST Graceland Update

What In The World Are Barack Obama And John Boehner Thinking? Posted: 18 Dec 2012 11:30 PM PST from The Economic Collapse Blog: Barack Obama and John Boehner both seem absolutely determined to drive U.S. government finances off a cliff. The mainstream media would have you believe that there are vast ideological differences between the two of them and that they are bitter enemies, but that is simply not the case. Both of them say that tax increases are "necessary", but they disagree over the details. Both are seeking about a trillion dollars of spending cuts and about a trillion dollars of new "revenue", but they don't see eye to eye on how to get there. But overall, they are both definitely playing in the same ballpark. And those numbers certainly do sound impressive until you realize that they are talking about a time span of ten years. Personally, I would love to see federal spending cut by a trillion dollars this year. But that will never happen. A trillion dollars over the course of a decade breaks down to about 100 billion dollars per year. That still sounds like a lot of money until you put it up next to the trillion dollar deficits that we have been running for four years in a row. Even if somehow those spending cuts turned out to be real (which they aren't), they would still only put a very small dent in our yearly budget deficits. Read More @ TheEconomicCollpaseBlog.com

Turk - Anti-Gold Propaganda Won’t Stop Monetary Destruction Posted: 18 Dec 2012 10:01 PM PST Today James Turk spoke with King World News about desperate steps and increased propaganda which are being undertaken by the Western central planners in an attempt to keep the gold and silver markets subdued. This is the third and final in a series of interviews with Turk that was released today which reveals the increasingly desperate moves and propaganda we are now seeing emanate from the West. This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Unusual price action in gold and silver, USD, oil, QE4 Posted: 18 Dec 2012 10:00 PM PST from Alexiscom1:

GoldSeek.com TV: Gold Confiscation? Will the Chinese Yuan replace the US Dollar? An interview with Julian Phillips Posted: 18 Dec 2012 09:33 PM PST GoldSeek.com TV presents an exclusive interview with South Africa's top gold analyst, Julian Phillips (www.GoldForecaster.com). He discusses several topics with interviewer Jonathan Roth (www.GoldSeek.com), including: - Will the Chinese Yuan replace the US Dollar as the world's reserve currency? - Will gold continue to climb while paper currencies depreciate? - Could gold be confiscated by national governments? Taped on-location in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Physical = Life, Paper = Death Posted: 18 Dec 2012 09:30 PM PST by Andy Hoffman, MilesFranklin.com: Last week, Bill Holter wrote a great article about the "hand wringing" currently going on amongst Precious Metals investors. But "investors" is the key word; as holding "PAPER PM Investments" is entirely different from owning PHYSICAL gold and silver; i.e., REAL MONEY… Why all the hand wringing? – Bill Holter, Miles Franklin I, and a handful of others like Bix Weir, have been among the loudest critics of "PAPER PM Investments" like ETFs and mining stocks; which, care of the Cartel, are marked for death. Remember, "THEY WANT YOU DEAD" – and the easiest way to accomplish this is to DESTROY your PAPER PM Investments. "They" can naked short miners into oblivion; essentially, making supply UNLIMITED – as opposed to the incredibly scarce supply of PHYSICAL gold and silver; which, by the way, is getting more scarce EACH DAY… Read more @ MilesFranklin.com

Euro Yen Cross – Redux Posted: 18 Dec 2012 08:30 PM PST by Dan Norcini: It has been several years since I last posted a chart of the Euro-Yen currency cross. Quite frankly, there has been no reason to monitor it in my opinion, not with the ongoing crisis that had engulfed the Euro Zone through most of this now fading year. However, with the strong move lower in the Yen of late, I have been examining this cross once again to see if it can provide us with any signals of upcoming events. You will note its collapse back in 2008 – this was the year in which the big Japanese Yen Carry Trade was unwound as nearly every hedge fund on the planet was taking part in tthat particular trade. When it was time to unwind it during the panic, there was literally no one on the other side of all those trades involving the Carrry. Read More @ TraderDanNorcini.Blogspot.com

Jeff Gundlach On The Fiscal Cliff Circus And Why Investors Should Hold Cash Through 2013 Posted: 18 Dec 2012 08:07 PM PST From the sheer hypocrisy of a fight over a few billion dollars when faced with trillion dollar deficits and the eventual austerity that will be forced upon the US, DoubleLine's Jeff Gundlach expounds on his growing concerns at markets where fundamentals "are trumped by policy decisions," and while he does not believe that bond markets are bubbly at the moment, the impact of an inevitable recession could be devastating given valuations. His subtle suggestion to keep powder dry through 2013 and into 2014 (as deploying money at that future point will make all the difference), follows from his view that he does not see much value in US equities and suggests great care be taken in US bond markets (focusing on low volatility funds) as he looks at Japan's dismal record (and hyperinflationary possibilities) and reflects on the US that "the issue isn't the fiscal cliff. The issue is the fiscal crisis that the United States has been looking at for the past several years."   Gundlach on how to invest in this environment: "One thing is clear that this is the beginning of an attempt to bring the fiscal deficit under control or at least start to address it. When you raise taxes and when you cut spending, whatever the combination is going to be, you will have headwinds for the economy. The economy is really being supported--this isn't just in the United States, it's in Japan, the ECB and Britain--the economy is being supported by quantitative easing that is allowing for a massive budget deficit and money printing exercises to go on...   As you address the fiscal problems, you are going to have weak economic growth. What that means is that you are in an environment that is going to have further trouble in terms of investment returns that are in areas that are based on economic growth and areas that do relatively well like bonds... Broadly speaking, I think that investors should be looking for lower prices on most risk assets in these developed countries with the exception of Japan…Investors should be looking for the potential inflationary consequences of all this money printing exercise and the place to look for that is Japan..." On whether Japan is foreshadowing for what will happen in the U.S.: "Possibly... I certainly think that Japan is the pace car here. They started out 20 years ago with their zombie bank problem and they've tried various things to get the economy going. Now there's some political change afoot in Japan and they are definitely in the place to look. Japan is in a uniquely bad position. The United States is not in as bad as a position as Japan."   "Ultimately, when you start to look at all this money printing which may continue, Ben Bernanke has said forever basically that yes, at some point, one has to worry about inflationary consequences. I've been saying for years though, that investors who are focusing on the near-term on inflation are way too early and that's still the case in the U.S." On whether investors should get more disciplined and look at fundamentals: "The fundamentals are always important but it does get trumped by policy decisions when policy decisions are so radical as has been the case in recent years... There seems to be diminishing returns on the various rounds of quantitative easing. It's almost like a half-life of a radioactive particle. The first quantitative easing brought 50%, the second brought a little more than half of that, the third half again, the fourth less than half again.   It just seems that the idea of a Pavlovian reaction when you see quantitative easing that you should go out and buy risk assets--it has worked four times, but it doesn't seem like you are getting much bang for your buck any more... I would point out that gold, for example, hasn't done much of anything in the last couple of rounds of quantitative easing. It seems that the fundamentals are starting to exert themselves more powerfully against the backdrop of endless quantitative easing, so it's possible that the market support is close to finding its limit. This is why I think that investors should be holding cash and buying risk assets at lower prices once the fundamentals assert themselves." On whether we're in a credit bubble: "I don't think there is a credit bubble at this point in time actually. The most powerful fundamental, which is really artificial thanks to the central banks, is that there is a zero interest rate in place in this massive market of government guaranteed securities and therefor by extension, very high quality bonds. It pushes people by necessity into other investments. I don't believe that until there are cracks in the credit quality structure of the credit system that you are going to see a substantial selloff in the credit markets for high yield bonds, non-guaranteed mortgage securities, emerging market debt, so I don't really expect that is going to happen."   "The real killer is going to be the next recession. And there will be one. The policymakers are trying hard to have it both ways... Ultimately as you address the fiscal situation, you're going to run the risk of a recession.  When the next recession comes, it's going to be a real killer because what exactly is going to be the policy response.  It will be policies in terms of raising taxes and cutting spending that help to bring on the next recession I think, so I don't think it's very plausible that you're going to just turn around and go back to the old method of pumping up the economy with debt... Next recession comes.  So the next recession probably is going to be somewhat cleansing, which means that you're going to see things repriced lower." On where to put your money if not prepared to do short-term trading: "You've got to survive with virtually no return if that's the way you look at things. I actually recommend that for many investors. I think the small amount of money that you might make by trying to push it here as we get closer and closer to the end game where this thing might tail out--the amount of money you might make will be dwarfed by the amount of money you might lose when things reprice lower.   Put it another way, if you just stay in cash and earn a small return or stay in a low risk investment and earn a middling single digit return--the money you might be able to make as we move into late 2013 or early 2014 with repricing, the amount of money you might make if you are able to deploy the money at that point will make all the difference. People always want investments to go up like a line... That's just not reality. You make 80% of your money in 20% of the time in investing and you have to be patient…I see some values in some of these foreign markets. I don't see a lot of value in the U.S. stock market and I think you have to play it safe in the U.S. bond market with funds that are really dedicated to having low volatility." On fiscal cliff talks: "Something is going to get done, it looks like, between John Boehner who has now blinked a little bit going with the million dollar tax bracket and the president going with the $400,000 tax bracket. They're getting close, but this is all just a big circus really. We have a $3.6 trillion spending going on at the federal government and they're taking in $2.3 trillion dollars. So the shortfall is $1.3 trillion and what we are talking about with the million dollar increase is about $20 billion of revenue that would be brought in. At the $400,000, you're talking about maybe $35 billion. So this is just masking a huge fiscal issue. The issue isn't the fiscal cliff. The issue is the fiscal crisis that the United States has been looking at for the past several years and this is sort of a down payment on finally some fiscal reform."

More Un-Predictions: Deutsche's 13 Outliers For '13 Posted: 18 Dec 2012 07:28 PM PST Following on the heels of Byron Wien, Morgan Stanley's Surprises, and Saxo's Outrageous Predictions, Deutsche Bank's FX strategy team has created a who's who of 13 outliers for 2013. Quite frankly, given the extreme nature of monetary (and now fiscal) policy, asset allocation decisions, and bankers' and politicians' willingness to go into the media and lie directly to our faces, the comprehension of the possible (no matter how improbable) is far more important for risk management than the faith in the centrally-planned unreality our markets (and therefore ourselves) currently find themselves in. As they note, all too often, the tendency to not stray too far from a self-anchoring recent-history-extrapolated consensus (while apparently highly profitable for some for a microcosm of time) leads to unrecoverable drawdowns exactly when career-risk was the limiting factor. From Malaysian elections and EM bubbles bursting to Fed monetizing equities and South China Sea escalation, these outliers seem all to 'normal' in our brave new world.     Via Deutsche Bank: When thinking about the year ahead, it is tempting to extrapolate the recent past whether looking at risks or one's base case. Moreover, there is a tendency not to deviate too far from consensus, perhaps seeing safety in being part of the herd. From a statistical perspective, this is very similar to assuming markets follow a normal or Gaussian distribution. That is, markets are well behaved and extreme outcomes are rare. The financial crisis of 2008 taught us otherwise, yet it is very difficult to shrug off the bias to assume normality in markets. We have therefore conducted an exercise within our team to think up 13 outliers or extreme events that could unfold over 2013. These are not simply the commonly cited risks to views, but events and occurrences that would genuinely surprise market participants; we underscore that these scenarios do not represent the DB base case. What we are trying to do is highlight outliers that are in the tails of the distribution. Our ability to predict outliers, by very definition, is limited, yet we hope the approach of assuming extreme events will be more common than we might think should provide the right mindset as we enter 2013. 1. Fed finances the purchases of equities The Fed has consistently taken a more aggressive approach to easing since the 2008 crisis. Indeed, the most recent FOMC meeting introduced QE4 and quantitative thresholds for future policy – steps that were more than many had expected. The question is, what could the Fed do next? Finance the purchase of equities could be the answer. Indeed, one of the strongest market reactions to past QEs has been stock market rallies, yet that effect appears to have faded since QE3 in mid-September, as equities have not rallied in the same way. With the US housing sector apparently turning the corner, stronger equities may be the necessary tonic to further increase household wealth, and also to boost investment. Moreover, it is not unprecedented amongst developed-world central banks. The Bank of Japan under its current Asset Purchase Programme buys corporate bonds, ETFs and REITS. While the Fed does have restrictions on what assets it can buy, it can invoke Section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act that allows more extreme actions in "unusual and exigent circumstances". One only needs to recall that the Fed created the Maiden Lane vehicle in 2008 to hold the risky assets of Bear Stearns that JPMorgan was not willing to hold to see what powers the Fed has.   Should this happen, growth and risk-sensitive currencies such as EM FX, dollar bloc and SEK should perform well.   Bilal Hafeez, London 2. Greece discovers gas reserves valued more than total debt Greece has sizeable undersea terrain in the Mediterranean, and several Mediterranean countries have already discovered and are exploiting undersea natural resources, most notably the Levantine gas field between Israel and Cyprus. A number of studies that have looked at similar gas finds in the Mediterranean as a basis of comparison put the potential size of gas fields to the South of Crete as high as $600bn. These are not based on hard geological evidence, and the government has recently commissioned a seismic survey company to determine the potential magnitude of reserves. Preliminary outcomes are expected in mid-2013, with a potential positive find generating a rare positive surprise for the debt-stricken country.   Should this happen, EUR should perform well. *'Greece looks out to sea for gas and wealth salvation,' Reuters Newswires, 3rd October 2012   George Saravelos, London 3. Sweden, Turkey and Brazil work together to bring peace to the Middle East In September, at the 67th UN General Assembly meetings in New York, Sweden, Brazil and Turkey launched a new initiative called the "Three soft powers from three continents". The first goal will be to prevent assaults on sacred values. However, the foreign ministers of each country, Carl Bildt of Sweden, Ahmet Davutoglu of Turkey and Antonio Patriota of Brazil, have talked about their interest in helping solve challenges facing the international community based on their common values of dialogue, multilateralism and democracy. In the past, Brazil and Turkey have attempted to resolve the nuclear issues in Iran, while Turkey and Sweden have worked together on issues in the Balkans. As the three countries work more closely together on international issues, their attention could once again turn to the Middle East. Syria is the most pressing issue, but their focus could expand to other countries in the region. The foreign ministers next meet in Turkey in January.   Should this happen, ILS and EGP should benefit and oil exporters CAD and RUB suffer at the expense of importers INR, TRY   Bilal Hafeez 4. UK coalition government breaks up – election called It is not widely anticipated by political analysts that the coalition government will hold until the end of the parliament term in 2015. Both the Liberal Democrat and Conservative parties will likely wish to have some time before the next election to distance themselves from the policies of their partners in the eyes of the electorate. This split could potentially occur as early as next year, with divisions over energy policy, parliamentary boundary changes, House of Lords reform and most importantly economic policy leading prominent party members to agitate for a split. Given that the parliamentary term is fixed, it seems the most likely outcome of a breakup would be a minority Conservative government that relies on informal Lib Dem support to pass legislation. However, if this were to prove unworkable, a vote of confidence could be called, which would lead to new elections.   Should this happen, GBP should depreciate.   Oliver Harvey, London 5. A 2013 race to negative depo rates and every major stock market in the world is up It started in Denmark and Switzerland, with Japan following, and to avoid excessive currency appreciation, EUR and then the US could follow suit with negative rates. But there is another investment vehicle. Currently only Spain and China's major equity indices are down in 2012. In 2005, China and Italy were the exceptions and were down, while in 2006 and 2009 there were no exceptions, with all 47 of the most liquid equity markets ending up on the year. With China widely seen as cheap, and EUR periphery risks dissipating, 2013 could be another year where every major equity market is up, aided and abetted by negative rates.   Should this happen, carry currencies should outperform.   Alan Ruskin, New York 6. North Korea opening/detente Unconfirmed reports this year suggested new North Korean leader Kim Jong-un planned to push ahead with reforms, enabling capitalistic agricultural and industry reform per China in the 1970s and 80s. The start date was reportedly slated for October 1, but was pushed back by food shortages until after the one-year anniversary of Kim's father's death on December 17. China's new leadership is also likely to push for more specific, tangible reforms, and they have plenty of leverage as North Korea's trade dependency on China has risen from 52% in 2005 to 84% last year. Incoming president Xi Jinping has close ties with the North, and Kim Jong-un is expected to visit China and meet Xi as soon as January. Meanwhile, Xi has expressed hopes that China's 'strategic cooperative partnership' with South Korea will develop further in 'new political circumstances.'   Should this happen, KRW should appreciate.   James Malcolm, London 7. Iran turns less hawkish or more volatile The Iranian presidential election is scheduled to take place on June 14th 2013 to choose a successor to Mahmood Ahmadinejad. While the list of candidates is pre-screened by the Iranian Council and the selection process is currently being tightened via changes to the electoral law, the election outcome still has potential to surprise. Indeed, Ahmadinejad himself was viewed as a political outsider when he announced his presidential bid as Mayor of Tehran in 2005, subsequently taking a hard-line stance on Iran's nuclear program. Somewhat ironically, the changes to the electoral law are mainly opposed by the current president, who reportedly views them as negatively affecting a potential candidacy bid of his close ally Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei. Other potential candidates mentioned in the press include Tehran's mayor Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, the chief nuclear negotiator and a close ally of Khamenei, Saeed Jalili, and Ali Larijani, the parliamentary speaker. Some are viewed as more pragmatic on Iran's nuclear program generating the potential for a softer foreign policy following the election, easing geopolitical risk in the Middle East next year. In the meantime, broader political and social uncertainty around the election cannot be ruled out, with Ahmadinejad's 2005 re-election causing a wave of protests and riots that lasted into 2010.   Should this happen, ILS would likely be most sensitive, along with oil betas (CAD and RUB in particular).   George Saravelos 8. Breakdown of FX/equity correlation The spike in correlation between G10 FX and equities beginning in 2008 and lasting through the present is unprecedented in the free float era. Next year may finally see the breakdown in this correlation for three reasons.   1. Global yield compression and light positioning has unwound carry trades: FX positioning has been reduced in large part because carry-to-vol ratios were not compelling; currencies such as EUR and CAD were still behaving like risky assets, with high betas to the S&P 500, even though carry in these pairs had long disappeared. Volatility is finally falling in these pairs to match the low carry as there are fewer G10 positions to unwind and hence the beta (if not yet the correlation) to the S&P 500 is falling.   2. Real activity data is less correlated as recovery proceeds at different speeds: The fundamental driver of FX/Equity correlation is likely global synchronization of business cycles, most prominently in 2008-09. This correlation has been falling for several years as the US economy outperforms an austerity-led European recession and Asian growth increasingly drives $-bloc and Scandinavian economies.   3. Volatility and correlation are falling in other asset classes: Falling S&P 500 single stock correlation, historically closely related to FX/equity correlation, points to the declining influence of global risk factors on individual asset prices. A correlation breakdown would have positive implications for currency investors. They would regain access to a diversified basket of instruments, useful and effective in expressing views on relative monetary policy, independent of the global growth landscape. The elimination of high beta volatility stemming from global macro risks would reduce currency portfolio volatility and potentially improve returns as fundamental and momentum investors get stopped out of trades less often. Finally, reduced equity correlation would likely rekindle interest in FX as an asset class, now seen by many macro investors as little more than a trendless proxy for equity volatility. Should this happen, FX should become more diversified. Daniel Brehon, New York 9. South China Sea territorial tensions escalate An increasingly assertive China, the US foreign policy pivot towards Asia, an ocean bed of potentially vast mineral reserves surrounded by fast-growing resource-hungry nations, disputed maritime boundaries, and fishing boats with tendencies to stray, all make for a combustible situation in the South China Sea. While a full-blown military conflict remains unlikely, a series of naval skirmishes in 2012 and creeping militarization in the region have bred suspicion and heightened tensions. Further provocation could begin to strain trade relationships in a region with highly integrated supply chains, dampening the exports recovery. It could also decrease (the potential for) intra-regional FDI at a time when the overseas investment push from Asia is increasing, and may also detract from the credit re-rating story underway in certain markets (i.e. Philippines).   Should this happen, all Asia FX including JPY should suffer.   Mallika Sachdeva, Singapore 10. Europe gets powered by solar In theory, an area of the Saharan desert the size of Wales could harness enough solar energy to power the whole of Europe. The theory may eventually turn into reality thanks to initiatives like Desertec, a consortium set up in 2009 to harness solar energy from the Sahara. Desertec aims to provide 15% of Europe's electricity by 2050. Solar and wind power projects have already started in Morocco. Importantly, in November of this year, Morocco, Germany France, Italy, Malta, and Luxembourg reached an understanding for the first joint project between Europe and Morocco. Spain's absence from the agreement has so far prevented the agreement from being formally executed, but expectations are that Spain will sign. Admittedly, there are issues of funding and partners for the overall project, but meaningful advances on the project over 2013 could result in one of the more positive surprises of the year.   Should this happen, EUR should benefit.   Bilal Hafeez 11. Climate change risks begin to get priced In March the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published a report warning that global warming is already resulting in such extreme weather that governments should prepare themselves for a higher incidence of natural disasters. This admonition was brought home most recently by the devastation caused on the US East Coast by Hurricane Sandy. Accelerating climate change has a number of implications for financial markets and FX. For example, if the droughts in the US, Russia and Brazil continue next year as forecast, this could lead to knock-on effects for global food prices, one result of which may be pressure on central banks to tighten policy (our Asia strategists already identified SGD's high beta to food prices for this reason in July). Natural disasters such as typhoons and hurricanes can have significant negative impacts on GDP and may weigh on the economic recovery. Finally, if markets begin to rerate potential future economic growth, or the longevity of certain energy sources, this could result in structural shifts in asset valuations.   Should this happen, FX vol should rise.   Oliver Harvey 12. EM bond bubble bursts The past few years have seen non-resident investors build up their positions in EM local debt markets to new record levels, driven by a broader global search for yield, monetary policy easing across major Emerging Markets and the healthy state of EM fiscal balance sheets. With few exceptions markets expect this trend to carry over into the new year. However, with output gaps typically limited, real rates at cyclical lows, and global liquidity abundant, EM economies will be sensitive to higher inflation, which could undermine the attractiveness of EM debt given that it is already unattractive vs. inflation expectations. Supply shocks, with higher food prices and/or crude triggering higher inflation would be particularly negative, and/or EM FX continuing to underperform would not only add to inflationary pressures but also undermine total returns of EM local debt. South Africa, Turkey, Russia, Brazil and Peru have the highest pass-through from food and oil prices to CPI and could end up yielding negative real rates in this scenario, which in turn could trigger substantial outflows.   Should this happen, EM FX should suffer and FX vol should rise.   Henrik Gullberg, London Siddharth Kapoor, London 13. Malaysia government loses election In Malaysia, elections must be called within the first half of 2013. Barisah National, the ruling coalition, lost its super-majority (two-thirds) for the first time in Malaysia's modern history in 2008, and there has been a growing popular movement for electoral reform since. An upset by the opposition - although very unlikely by all public indications - could have a significant impact on economic policy (fate of the government's flagship Economic Transformation Plan, tax policies) and would likely hurt the equity market with government-linked companies taking a hit. In India, while national elections are not due until 2014, the government - currently operating as a minority coalition - is dependent on drawing shaky support from a diverse group of regionalist, populist, and pro-/anti-reform parties. Support from the latter could slip amidst a series of state elections next year, prompting early elections. The ensuing policy vacuum and a dimmer/deferred outlook for reforms would likely drive off much-needed portfolio flows. Should this happen, MYR should depreciate. Mallika Sachdeva   Source: Deutsche Bank

Central Bank Insurance Posted: 18 Dec 2012 06:40 PM PST Bitten By the Gold Bug Time to Buy, or Sell? Gold in Ancient Rome and Today Is Gold a Currency Hedge? Then Why Buy Gold? Central Bank Insurance How to Buy Gold Scandinavia, Europe, and Toronto Oh, and the Mayan Calendar "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong." –H. L. Mencken Possibly, the question I am asked the most is, "What do you think about gold?" While I have written brief bits about the yellow metal, I cannot remember the last time I devoted a full e-letter to the subject of gold. Longtime readers know that I am a steady buyer of gold, but to my mind that is different from being bullish on gold. In this week's letter we will look at some recent research on gold and try to separate some of the myths surrounding gold from the rationale as to why you might want to own some of the "barbarous relic," as Keynes called it. My personal reasons for owning gold have evolved over the ...

My Boomer Life and the Greatest Generation Parents Who Raised Me Posted: 18 Dec 2012 06:14 PM PST I won't be posting a Quinn-like masterpiece with lots of graphs and statistics. First, I don't have that ability. Second, I am not a statistic. I am a person … so this will be a personal story with anecdotes about my achy-breaky Boomer life. Mostly, I just want to address the following question; "ARE BOOMERS RESPONSIBLE FOR EVERYTHING WRONG IN AMERICA TODAY?" First, let me whine a little.  A number of folks here (you know who you are, lol) answer that question with an emphatic "YES!!".  I find it incredulous that otherwise very smart folks can say such things. I don't know if it's said just for effect to "piss off" Boomers such as myself, or if you can really attribute this country's Great Malaise to such a simple theory.   It is also rather dismaying that whenever ANYTHING positive is said about the Boomer generation, then that person is accused of being in "denial" or an "apologist".  It's almost as if the quest for knowledge ceases when it comes to Boomers … a really surprising turn of events considering the large number of INTJs here. Others will say we Boomers shouldn't take it "personally" — which, really, is like calling a black person "nigger", and then exclaiming, "Oh! Please don't take that personally". Tough to do! Accuse me of whatever you wish. I simply cannot wrap my tiny mind around the Broad Brush Approach — lumping an entire generation of 76 million people  as the cause of Everything Evil is not wise, helpful, applicable, or even possible, imho.  You might as well say, "Humans caused all our evils" … which would also be equally correct, and equally useless since the classification is too enormous.  But if one is looking for an Easy Unified Theory of Everything Wrong With America … "Boomers Did It" … well, have at it. I cannot identify with the rich Boomers, because I am not rich. I cannot identify with the rich Greatest Generation , because I am not rich. I cannot identify with the rich of any generation, because I am not rich. Without advocating a class-warfare approach, I must maintain that a far greater divide in America is along Class — not, age.  The mega-rich, the mega-powerful, the ultra-elite — yeah, the 1% — as George Carlin says, THEY are your owners! Redirect your anger accordingly. I am NOT against the younger generation. I love 'em. I feel I have more in common with my emotionally troubled son than with most Boomers in my life.  Unlike what happens to many old farts, he at least he still questions everything, still wonders what this crazy life is all about, still wonders how he "fits in".  Just like I did when I was his age, and actually, still do to some extent.  \\end:whining// STUCKY  CONSIDERS HIS PAST WHILE AT A CHRISTMAS CONCERT A couple Sundays ago I went to my Dad's Christmas concert.  He sings for The Plainfield Gesang & Turn Verein, a German-American heritage club that was founded in 1886. There were about 200 people in attendance.  I would say that 90% of demographics were Boomers such as myself and our parents, The Greatest Generation. I not only listened to the music, but as I watched my dad singing so proudly, and as I glanced at my mom who always gets weepy at this event, my mind also grew nostalgic, as it is prone to do at such holiday occasions. It is only in the past few years that I have seen my parents as "whole" persons. What I mean by that is that their whole existence on this planet, as far as I was concerned for most of my life, only started around when I was 5 years old … my earliest memories of them. That means about 30 years of their lives — while they did start to tell me bits and pieces once I turned 17 and thereafter — well, for all intents and purposes it simply didn't exist. What a damn shame, to my own detriment, that I didn't even care about the great fountain of experience and knowledge I so easily dismissed. The major event that shaped my parent's lives was WWII. With apologies to all those here who know this story, I shall very briefly summarize it for those who don't, for context. My dad was a German living in Romania.  One day, when dad was a teenager, the German Army came sweeping into his village, yanked him from his home, told him he was in the German Army, sent him to the Russian front, where he was captured, spent time in a Russian prison camp, and upon release was not allowed to return to Romania and never saw his family again, but was instead sent to England to work in the coal mines for several years – a form of 'reparation', before he made his way to a refugee camp in Austria. My mother was a German living in Yugoslavia. One day, when she was a teenager, the Russian Army came sweeping into her village. They shot a lot of older German men – the young ones were all off to war — on the spot. Virtually all the women in the village were promptly sent to a Russian gulag, where she was raped, saw her mom raped and then murdered in front of her eyes. After the war ended only she and her brother remained alive, they were not allowed to return to their village, and they walked to a refugee camp in Austria. I don't relay these events for pity. Screw that. They are just one of millions of German families who suffered in WWII … just as millions of Americans have suffered in WWII, with only the details changing. I just have a story to tell, and my parent's story is a huge part of my story. Of course I can't speak for 76 million of us except in a general sense.  For example, I graduated from a high school of about 2,000 and I feel comfortable in saying we all share the Same Boomer Story, generally speaking. THE KEY TO UNDERSTANDING BOOMERISM The point is these are the people who raised my fat Boomer ass … which they did not do in a vacuum, independent of things that shaped their lives.  The picture in your mind's eye of a "Boomer" is quite incomplete if you forget, or misunderstand, our Greatest Generation parents. So, I'm watching my mother as she watches the concert, I put my hand around her shoulder as I see her eyes well up with tears. What is she thinking?  What pains are still so real to her today .. that I can't help her with?  I start thinking about my own 59 years of living … how crystal clear certain events of my own teenage years still are … as if they happened yesterday. And then a feel a certain shame that it took me so long to see my parents as whole persons.  I suddenly feel despondent that I so despised several aspects of my upbringing that I couldn't wait to join the military, even in the midst of the Vietnam war, just to get the fuck out from under my parent's thumb.  Before taking a look at how the Greatest Generation raised us, let's quickly take a look at another key to understanding Boomers;  the world in which we lived HAPPY HAPPY JOY JOY ?? The Gay 20's really weren't all that gay, just as  the world Boomers inherited wasn't only the fun, Hippie, pot-smokin', LSD trippin', rock'n-roll groovin', free love image that is remembered today. Two big events and a ton of smaller ones helped turn our once pure souls to the Dark Side. First Big Event: Da Bomb. Russia. Nukes. Commie bastards. Ka-BAM! All gone. Nuclear winter. Dead. Why??? Nuke drills!! Little Boomer children hiding under desks for protection. Little Boomer children watching gub'mint movies showing homes blasted to smithereens. Little desk hiding Boomers not stupid, "We gonna die under this desk!!"  Was I forever traumatized – some prepubescent PTSD – by these drills? No. Did it affect my perception of what the world was about and that just maybe it made no sense at all and that the grownups were idiots and that since tomorrow may never come so I might as well live just for today … even though I was just a kid at the time?  You better believe it. Second Big Event. Vietnam. Dirty, nasty, disgusting, vile war that killed 60,000 of us and maimed hundreds of thousands more. What was it good for? Absolutely nothing.  Did it affect my perception of what the world was about and that just maybe it made no sense at all and that the grownups were idiots and that since tomorrow may never come so I might as well live just for today? You better believe it. Not to mention in no particular order;  civil rights ….. riots …. . corrupt government openly lying ….. a disgraced president ….. dead soldiers faces broadcast on TV every night ….. Kent State …..  double-digit unemployment ……. Midnight Cowboy ….. 25% interest rate for a home loan ….. gas lines ….. shitty cars that exploded ….. S&L crisis ….. Bay of Pigs ….. nukes in Cuba!! …. Abortion …. JFK ….. and, MLK …. Jimmie Hendrix and Janis Joplin …. Gloria Steinem and  woman's rights ….. no more prayer in school ….. the Ayatollah ….. Supreme Court turns activist all over the place …… Korea ….. school integration ………………. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Did we shape the times, or did the times shape us? I think it's the latter. Simple math.  The first Boomers were born in 1946.  How old are the people-in-charge, the leaders, the CEOs, the 535 politicians that rule our lives … i.e., the people who actually make things happen?  Let's be conservative and say that it's 30 years old.  So, the first Boomers with power to affect the status quo  arrive on the scene only in 1975.  I  would say Boomers  took the helms of power around  daddy Bush's presidency in 1989 – when the first Boomers were 43 years old. The "ME Generation" —- A MISNOMER We are … and you may add the adjective "most" to many  of these descriptions;  selfish, self-indulgent, unwilling to sacrifice, politically correct, drug addicted, material minded, entitled, liberal or commie shits, bad parents, lazy, humans to ever walk the earth. And to top it all off we invented Afro's and disco (actually, two legitimate reasons to hate us).  Amazingly, we accomplished all this because of the year in which we were born.  And because of our sin of 'The Year Of Our Birth', you can go to literally hundreds of blogs other than here and find the admonishment that Boomers should "just die already".  The implication being, that once this happens, pretty much everything will return to bliss, prosperity, and overall happiness.  I read that we Boomers only cared about only three things;  1) Me, 2) Me, and 3) Me.  Just like the "love of money" is the root of evil,  our preoccupation with "Me" is the root cause underlying our evilness. BUT — the ME-Generation was raised by the Greatest Generation. How would YOU like to be born following that moniker?  Imagine you have just one older sibling, and your parents referred to him/her as "The Greatest Kid".  It just might fuck you up!  Lol   Boomer babies didn't drop out the shoot and at the moment of birth become The Most Selfish Bastards ever.  We did not raise ourselves. Somewhere along the line, some person(s) and some event(s) helped us along into becoming selfish pricks.  Cause leads to effect, nature abhors a vacuum. What do you THINK you know about The Greatest Generation? Unless you're a Boomer, what you think you know about the Greatest Generation is likely inaccurate.  The people you know as grandparents are NOT the same people who raised us.  Some kind of Weird Assed Transformation took place from the time we were born to the people you know. Maybe it has to do with the aging process – whereby one becomes more introspective, soft hearted, and most importantly – accepting of Things As They Are … not, What They Should Be, a mantra us Boomer kids heard a million times if we heard it once.   Maybe it was the realization that their own Materialism was a big mistake … and trust me on this, in many ways they were much more materialistic than their boomer children.  Maybe they didn't 'change', maybe they just 'adapted' – but, the Metamorphosis into A New Life Form –one that is NOW loved and revered –  is and was spectacular.   Let's take a look at what Boomer kids heard growing up " I'm not buying you a new pair of Converse sneakers. You think money grows on trees?" "You're not going out dressed like that, are you? What will the neighbors think?" "I slave all day to put food on the table, so you damn well better eat all of it!"  "You don't know what hardship is all about.  WE had it rough." "Kids in China are starving. Learn some gratitude, dammit."  "You see all the stuff we have?.  We did all this for you." "Turn off the damn lights. You think electricity is free?"  "You don't know the meaning of sacrifice." "Cut your hair!  At least look respectable."  "You don't know how lucky you are." "At least you could show some respect."  "You don't know the value of things." "Why don't you appreciate anything?"  "Quit acting like a bum!"  KaPow!!  (We boomer kids got wacked …. A LOT) If you don't see a significant amount of materialism in those statements then, I'm sorry, you're just not being perceptive enough.  Materialism is largely a state of mind.  Bertrand Russel said,  ——- "It is the preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else that prevents us from living freely and nobly." HANGING ONTO WHAT YOU GOT LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDED ON IT It's not about how much stuff you own. It's about the stuff you own that eventually owns you.  A middle aged man attempts to reclaim his youth and buys a vintage Harley, just like the one in Easy Rider. He owns the bike.  Before you know it he's spending all weekend polishing every nut and bolt.  Then he decides it needs some restoration, and he spends a few grand doing that.  Then he spends more and more time away from his family and with his fellow enthusiasts, riding around town, showing off like a peacock. Then one day his teenage son accidently puts a small scratch on the fender.  He hurls a string of expletives at his son for committing this unforgiveable sin.  The bike now owns HIM. Although I lacked nothing growing up, my pre-boomer angst was fueled by the ever present possibility that all the blessings bestowed on me could be lost at any time. From scarcity we came, and to scarcity we could return.  This pretty much fulfills Bertrand Russels's  materialism "preoccupation" criteria. Our stuff, meager as it might be, owned us.  The resultant activity of the scarcity meme, in terms of materialism, is that my Greatest Generation dad worked his ass off to make sure scarcity would never rear its ugly head. This is admirable and not to be condemned.  Don't you, and I, do the very same thing for our children?  But, it did have unintended consequences.  Growing up I couldn't help but feeling that material gain was more important than anything else. Our parents did work their fingers to the bone.  But by the time they dragged their tired asses through the door, they were too tired to hug us.  They were too tired to have any really meaningful conversations, especially about sex.  "Children should be seen, and not heard." , I swear was God's eternal truth scripted somewhere in the Gospels. So, we spent a great deal of our time out of our parents' sight.  That was great for both of us … far less arguments. We even had our own special place to play in the house.  The basement. We sure as hell never romped around the main level, especially the living room;  "Don't sit there!  That's GOOD furniture!!".  Our little boomer minds duly noted; 'furniture more important than us'. Watch reruns of 'Everybody Loves Raymond' and Marie's living room to see the hilarious abortions  our parents resorted in order to "save" the good furniture;  they covered everything in plastic! Lol  All of us immediately identified with the advice Dustin Hoffman received in The Graduate;  "Plastics, my boy. Plastics."  Eventually we got the last laugh when all that plastic shit turned a putrid shade of yellow, and the cushions smelled like skunk ass when the plastic was removed. Meanwhile, we were banished to the basement where we could destroy nothing of real value. FROM DEPRIVATION TO EXCESS TO REBELLION One of the most common reactions to deprivation is excess.  For example, people who have faced starvation will often, once circumstances have changed, become gluttons.  This was our parents' response. Then, as time passes, a typical reaction to excess is rebellion. This was our response.  For example, on a grand scale a Colonist eventually  rebels against the excesses of his British masters, and dumps tea in the bay.  On an individual scale, children (of any era) eventually rebel against their parents' excessive rules by doing the exact opposite. The goal of the Rebel, whether a nation or a child,  is always to starve the master of their power. This dynamic plays out predictably well in the Greatest Generation / Boomer relationship.  The Greatest Generation faced deprivations in spades; from the Great Depression to Dust Bowls to World War II. The end of the Big War ushers in the greatest economic boom in American history, or something like that.  Remembering their deprivations the Greatest Generation becomes as materialistic as any in recent memory.  Some of you folks err when you compare that materialism back then with what we have today.  You look at countless graphs, data, GDPs, debt, one financial ratio after another … compare the two eras … and somehow conclude that the Greatest Generation were 'savers'.  The "numbers" don't look so bad back then only because the whole shebang was just getting started.  Some shit just takes time to get stinky. What was this great economic post-war boom about? Was it not the beginning of Consumerism? What do you think this is all about;  … getting that little starter house, then upgrading to the bigger house with the nice white picket fence, movin' on up to a good neighborhood, getting that  fifty cent promotion, replacing a literal ice-BOX with a real refrigerator, getting a nice big Dee-troit car or two,  the explosion of corporate TV shows like the Colgate Comedy Hour … if not consumer fueled materialism? Excess folks, excess. "Oh Yeah?  Well …. fuck you!!" The Boomer children, mostly neglected as daddy –and soon, mommy – pursued the Good Life (FOR us, naturally) reacted in a way that shouldn't be a surprise …. we rebelled against our oppressor for their real or imagined sins.   Only we did with much greater aplomb than ever before ; we didn't fuck around, we were all in.  They had short-haired geeky musicians, we had long-haired hip rockers.  They had booze, we had drugs.  They had rules – lots of them —, we had none. Free Love, baby!  If it feels good, do it. Love the one you're with.  They worked hard, we went to Woodstock. They had a lifeless church, we had the Jesus Movement.  They followed the call of  Madison Avenue,  our hearts  hung out at Haight and Ashbury. They liked Ike, we preferred Dylan.  They wore penny loafers, we had sandals and a bandana (and other ridicules articles of clothing). And so it went at every turn; right or wrong, a repudiation of ALL that came before.  So people  look back on this crazy-assed behavior and label us the "ME" generation.  I'll grant you that there is some truth to that.  But, it falls far short  of what was really going on. It wasn't "me, me, me" as much as it was; "fuck you, fuck you, and fuck you". BTW, isn't that EXACTLY what the younger generations are saying about us Boomers; "Fuck You!"?   History rhyming yet again. Solomon correctly wrote; "Vanity of vanities, there is nothing new under the sun." I don't know what dumbass mistakes this younger generation will make — I sometimes feel they think they'll make none, the first Perfect Generation — but trust me on this one thing oh Young Ones, you too will blow it … and your offspring will mock you as well. BOOMERS NEVER EARNED ANYTHING — EVERYTHING WAS HANDED TO THEM Nothing quite baffles me like this accusation.  I shake my head wondering exactly what was given to me. I started out getting a fifty-cent allowance, back when fifty cents could still get me into the movies (double feature plus cartoons, a soda, and a popcorn and get a nickel back). It wasn't "free" either … it came attached to doing chores.  Mow the lawn, take out the garbage, do the dishes when asked, and keep my room clean.  This our parents called "learning responsibility". All for 2 bits … good thing we weren't Unionized. But for real money to get real stuff — like those Converse sneakers — we had to work.  So, I got my first job at around 13 selling subscriptions of the town newspaper door to door on Saturdays.  I got a dollar per new subscription.  Some Saturdays I'd rack up 20 plus bucks and back then that was living large. My first real job was in high school. I worked in a lasagna factory, stirring lasagna in a huge vat of boiling water … for $1.35 an hour. And I never stopped working since.  We worked hard all our lives. My friends all did likewise.  So. Pardon me if I am offended at being called "selfish, greedy, and entitled" as I refuse to accept that label. Speaking of "entitled", perhaps this is what people mean; all those juicy gub'mint entitlement programs, especially SS and Medicare.  First of all, social security was NOT created by the Boomer generation. So, solly.  Try the generation before us. Medicare was NOT created by Boomers either. Sure it was enacted in 1965. The oldest of the Boomer generation would have been born in 1943 … making that Boomer just 22 years old in 1965. The voting age was still 21.  Please don't tell me Medicare was voted into being because of then 22 year old Boomers! I know people just hate it when us old farts "expect" to collect on SS. Can you walk in my shoes for a moment?  Let's say you paid $50,000 into some account set up by the gub'ment. It is money you earned by the sweat of your brow.  You didn't ask the gob'ment to do this for you.  They took it by force and promised to give it back to you later. Much later. That "much later" is now here, and some people want to tell us, "Hey, you can't have the money. The gub'ment spent it and you can't have it." We used to have a word for this: Theft.  Look, I can understand that I may not be able to collect SS forever until I die.  But, can I at least get MY $50,000 dollars back?? You don't even have to pay any interest, if that makes it better. I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE SINS OF MY BRETHREN I won't cover any of the other Entitlements / Social Programs.  All I  can tell you I voted Republican most of my life, and I cannot ever recall voting based on getting free shit.  Foreign policy, wars, and character where my usual hot buttons. I don't know how other Boomers voted. I don't care. I don't care because I don't believe in the idea of Collective Guilt. Google that term and the first page will show articles on "German collective guilt over Nazis", so this is a topic I personally know something about. It is a heinous principle first found in the Old Testament that — "The sin of the fathers He punishes on the children to the third and fourth generation."  A monstrous mockery of justice!! Collective guilt refuses to acknowledge the INDIVIDUAL. Evil regimes and their dictators (Stalin, Mao, Marx, etc.) love collective guilt as they collectivize individuals as "the populace" or "the masses" or "the workers" and then enslave or execute them as it suits their purposes. That's why I have often said here that the demonization of Boomers may one day logically lead to Death Chambers for us old farts. You, dear reader, don't believe in collective guilt either. Do you find yourself guilty of the crime of slavery? No.  Do you find yourself guilty for the genocide of Native Americans ? No. Do you find yourself guilty for Mai Lai? No.  Do you find me guilty for Buchenwald?  No.  So why do you throw all Boomers in the Collective guilty pot?  It is said 'people get the government they deserve'.  If that's true then I should find YOU guilty for the current mess we're in. But, don't worry, I won't because that entire argument is specious.   Here's one way we should follow in the footsteps of the Greatest Generation; they didn't blame their own parents for their youthful excesses of the '20′s which then led to the financial ruin of the Great Depression . They just pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and made the best of a bad situation. So should we. "YOU MADE PROMISES TO US ………. AND YOU LIED!!" Another common theme amongst disgruntled Utes are the broken promises we Boomers made. When I went to the Occupy Wall Street demonstration in NYC I saw more than a few Utes displaying  posters about Education  … "$60,000 in Student Loans and No Job", and several variations thereof, including demands to forgive the debt.  For change of pace I will number my responses. 1)— Guess what kids?  Your generation isn't the only one that was lied too. We were lied too, also. So, welcome to the real world. 2)— Guess who told us that education was the path to a better life?  That's right, our Greatest Generation parents.  We just passed what we learned in OUR youth, onto you. By and large that's how parenting works. Again, welcome to the real world. 3)— Our parents valued education because they were mostly blue-collar workers toiling away in factories (remember those?). They saw first-hand that the "higher-ups", the folks in the office, the guys in white-collars made significantly more loot than they did.  So, putting two and two together they came up with the brilliant conclusion that education pays.  And that's why I got my ass kicked whenever I brought home a bad Report Card. The first question at the dinner table was, "Did you wash your hands?". The second and usually last question was "Did you do your homework?"  Study, study, study was drilled into our mush brains until the cows came home. It is really no more complicated than that. 4)— What's wrong with furthering your education anyway? Did we commit some Mortal Sin in telling you to study? Don't you know that we "pushed" this Horrible Thought on you for a reason?  Don't you know that with knowledge you'll learn how to think and analyze. Don't you know the value of  using logic and rational thought, and how that will benefit you throughout your life?  Don't you know we wanted to give you a foundation that would allow you to filter through all the bullshit the world tries to feed you? Apparently, not. 5)— Regarding not paying back your loan.  Where did you learn that from?  Certainly not from us Boomers when you were young!  Again, we taught you what was taught to us. And here's one thing I can guaran-damn-tee you our parents showed us; paying one's bills was a Badge of Honor.  It wasn't God, country, and apple pie. It was Pay Your Bills, God, country, and apple pie. My parents would sacrifice a meal in order to pay a bill.  We taught you to do the same when you were little. Here's what Boomers and the Greatest Generation did wrong. 6) We monetized "value" when talking about "the value of an education".  Did the Greek philosophers value education to make more money? No.  Did the great men of the Renaissance era value education to make more money? No. Did our Founding Fathers value education to make more money? No.  The "value" of an education is more than exploiting it for financial gain (see #4 above).  But, clearly, modern America is all about the Almighty Dollar.  So, I went to college pretty much in order to make better money. And I told my kids to go to college to make better money. Guilty as charged. Money, it's a gas. I suppose what pisses off Utes is that Boomers were actually able to get jobs when they graduated, while they can't. Which leads me to my final point. 7) Tough shit!!  And please don't tell me us Boomers "guaranteed" you a good job upon getting an education. First of all if you actually believed such a statement you need to recalibrate your Bullshit Detector. They never has been and never will be any guarantees in life, except death, taxes, and obese fat women pictures from our own beloved AWD.  Secondly, it's a lie from hell.  Our Greatest Generation parents were keenly aware of the possibility of losing it all … again.   They even coined a unique phrase to drill home the concept of no guarantees; –"you never know". For example, "Put down that stick! You could poke your sister's eye out, YOU NEVER KNOW!" (In my childhood there were apparently about 845 ways to poke out my sister's eye.) Or, "Put on clean underwear before we drive to church.  We might have an accident, YOU NEVER KNOW!".  Or, "No, we're not joining the community swimming pool.  We need to save every penny, YOU NEVER KNOW when we'll need it.".  Lastly, Utes also blame Boomers that they can't get married,  they have to live with their parents, will never be able to start a family, buy a house, etc. etc.  It all boils down to "life isn't fair". Well!  1) we Boomers used that phrase on our own parents a million times.  Please come up with something new.  2)  In what fairy-tale are you living where 'fairness' is the rule of the land? 3) Stop emulating Gordon Gecko. Try, Tim the Toolman. 4) My parents taught me this and I pas

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NO COMPROMISE. Posted: 18 Dec 2012 06:03 PM PST If Admin was a Texan he'd sound like this: http://www.thelonestarwatchdog.com/2012/12/18/gun-owners-vs-gun-grabbers-who-is-unreasonable-and-belligerent/ Ever since the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown Ct. It has been non-stop being anti-gun and anti-second amendment non-stop in the media. They have been demonizing gun ownership non-stop as being the blame. The press is not talking about the psychotropic drugs being the cause of these people going crazy shooting innocent people. The anti-gun crowd have lost the argument about gun control long ago. As responsible gun owners, we know the logic of the gun grabbers since last Friday was a knee jerk reaction since children were killed in the last shooting. They are using dead children as a pawn for political gain.They are trying to use this tragic event as a means to confiscate the guns. Guns are not to blame, it is who pulls the trigger for whatever reason is the cause. Firearms are a tool like a battle ax or a baseball bat. Drunk drivers killing people has not banned cars. People being bludgeoned to death by a baseball bat has not banned baseball. Here is the reason why they want the guns out of the hands of the people – The government cannot rape, kill, pillage and burn because the people will shoot back. The government wants to take the private pension funds from Americans to bailout the banks. Many people will hunt and hang the Bankers for stealing their life's savings. The government wants a disarmed population; the government being armed as a rear guard so the people cannot resist if we are disarmed. Since the gun grabbers use children as a pawn, they are saying we have to compromise and come half way. Well to the anti gun crowd, many people are saying hell no. We have nothing to apologize about. We have nothing to be ashamed of for being a gun owner. We are not responsible for those deaths in Newtown. We need to go on the offensive. We have to hold the line and be stubborn. In the past we have been gracious and compromised hoping to find common ground with the gun control crowd. It has not worked. The anti gun crowd still wanted us to give up more. The gun grabbers will not be satisfied until the people are disarmed. This is the time to push back. All weekend long, we can tell the gun control crowd is not getting any traction. They are losing the public relations battle. Now they are saying again, we need to find common ground. We have nothing in common with the gun grabbers. I say, let's be stubborn. We have tried their solutions and they have caused more death and have not helped no one.  The gun grabbers are authoritarians who want to dominate the American people. They could care less about the children's safety. If they really did, then Obama should stop his drone attacks bombing weddings killing 100 men, woman and CHILDREN just to kill one terrorist. He would make sure Pedophiles would not have TSA jobs and ban these psychotropic drugs that make someone with a cool head and raving lunatic. Where is the gun grabbers taking responsibility for their guy Barrack Obama who shipped guns into Mexico that killed many Mexican children. As long the people have the guns, they cannot implement carbon taxes and force Obamacare down our throats. They cannot force us to take vaccines against our will. They cannot use the NDAA and put us in FEMA camps. They cannot control us as long we are armed. I see through these gun grabbers. Even since Obama was elected as President, Guns and Ammunition sales have being going through the roof increasing ever since. The gun culture is coming back. This is our opportunity to take back lost ground we gave up in the past 20 years. We have the facts to prove their gun control laws have not worked or kept children safe. Chicago, Washington DC and New York city have banned firearms in the hands of the people. They are high crime areas. Gun Free School zones or any place there is a gun free zone, criminals or the mentally deranged do not obey those laws. They have been kill zones because the faculty cannot bring a gun on campus. We know when the government disarmed the people. Mass genocide has followed. China is a gun free zone, The soviet union was a big gun free zone. These countries murdered over 100 million innocent people in the 20th century. After the United Kingdom and Australia banned guns. Their crime skyrocketed. Our neighbor Mexico south of the border, people are forbidden the own guns for self protection. The political system is corrupt and the outlaws are the only ones armed that terrorize the innocent and defenseless. Operation fast and furious put weapons in the violent drug cartels hands.   There you see their solutions have failed to make the people safer. Gun control kills more people than helps. Criminals in government and in the street like gun control because they do not respect the law. When the people are disarmed, these criminal parasites feed off the defenseless people. Here is the truth about armed societies: Everywhere people where armed, the shooter was stopped in their tracks with minimal loss of life. Guns stop crimes more than commit them. The city of Kennasaw Georgia, every home is required to be armed. They have the lowest crime rate below the national average. Switzerland , every home has a rifle and military style weapon. They have a non existent crime rate. The States of Vermont and Arizona have the lowest crime rates because they have unrestricted gun laws. Everywhere in states that have conceal and carry where people carry a gun on their person. Crime has been low. So who is unreasonable and belligerent? It is not the gun owner who is law abiding. We hurt no one. It is the gun grabbers who are belligerent because they do not want to admit their solutions do not work and these gun retrictions have killed more people. The media is suppressing the fact that a CCW carrier stopped the shooter in the mall out in Oregon.  The CCW carrier ignored the gun free zone law. Guns in the hands of law abiding American does stop these mass shootings. Gun ownership is now the third rail in politics. They touch our second amendment. Politically they will lose.We do not need to find common ground with the gun grabbers. We do not need to come to an agreement with the gun control advocates. We do not need to compromise with them to keep them quiet. Their Federal Gun Free School Zone law killed 22 children because the teachers had no means to defend themselves and protect the students. It was not the guns that killed the children. It was gun restrictions that killed the children. In their minds, compromise is us giving up our right and them gaining what they want even though they may not get it all. Eventually they will get their way if we compromise with them because they give up nothing and we lose everything. There is no common ground with the gun grabbers. Ignore them, shout them down and expose them as tyrannical control freaks who want to dominate our lives. The anti gun crowd has blood on their hands with their solutions because they know these laws do not reduce crime, but increase it. This is what makes them unreasonable and belligerent. They could careless about our safety. They want to control us. They know we are the final check on their power. The willing accomplice, the state run media is going full throttle demonizing guns calling it racist if we are for the second amendment, the NRA is the KKK. That we are responsible for the deaths in CT. Do not believe it. We are witnessing the death throws of an empire on its last legs. The anti gun media and the authoritarian politicians do not have the moral high ground anymore. The media and the government are so discredited. They are losing their audience. This mad media hype and hysteria will run out of steam no matter how many shootings they try to use to make people scared of guns. That momentum they will use will come back like a boomerang against them. The 22 children killed in Sandy Hook Elementary school was in a state with one of the most strict gun control laws that deny the people the right to keep and bear arms. It also exposed the folly that gun free schools zones makes the schools safer. It also says gun control laws do not work. The authoritarians are desperate. We can see the belligerence of the talking heads in the globalist media trying to push for banning all the guns. They are the ones who are unreasonable. When we see this obvious repeated mantra. You will see they are desperate and the empire is ready to collapse. When the dollar implodes and the economy flounders. If the people are still armed. Many people are going to jail on Wall Street when people know who done it and who are the agents who done their bidding in high places in government. The media brainwashing is over. It is losing. Do not compromise, we are winning.

MATT TAIBBI ON HSBC Posted: 18 Dec 2012 06:02 PM PST If you've ever been arrested on a drug charge, if you've ever spent even a day in jail for having a stem of marijuana in your pocket or "drug paraphernalia" in your gym bag, Assistant Attorney General and longtime Bill Clinton pal Lanny Breuer has a message for you: Bite me. Breuer this week signed off on a settlement deal with the British banking giant HSBC that is the ultimate insult to every ordinary person who's ever had his life altered by a narcotics charge. Despite the fact that HSBC admitted to laundering billions of dollars for Colombian and Mexican drug cartels (among others) and violating a host of important banking laws (from the Bank Secrecy Act to the Trading With the Enemy Act), Breuer and his Justice Department elected not to pursue criminal prosecutions of the bank, opting instead for a "record" financial settlement of $1.9 billion, which as one analyst noted is about five weeks of income for the bank. The banks' laundering transactions were so brazen that the NSA probably could have spotted them from space. Breuer admitted that drug dealers would sometimes come to HSBC's Mexican branches and "deposit hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, in a single day, into a single account, using boxes designed to fit the precise dimensions of the teller windows." This bears repeating: in order to more efficiently move as much illegal money as possible into the "legitimate" banking institution HSBC, drug dealers specifically designed boxes to fit through the bank's teller windows. Tony Montana's henchmen marching dufflebags of cash into the fictional "American City Bank" in Miami was actually more subtle than what the cartels were doing when they washed their cash through one of Britain's most storied financial institutions. Though this was not stated explicitly, the government's rationale in not pursuing criminal prosecutions against the bank was apparently rooted in concerns that putting executives from a "systemically important institution" in jail for drug laundering would threaten the stability of the financial system. The New York Times put it this way: Federal and state authorities have chosen not to indict HSBC, the London-based bank, on charges of vast and prolonged money laundering, for fear that criminal prosecution would topple the bank and, in the process, endanger the financial system. It doesn't take a genius to see that the reasoning here is beyond flawed. When you decide not to prosecute bankers for billion-dollar crimes connected to drug-dealing and terrorism (some of HSBC's Saudi and Bangladeshi clients had terrorist ties, according to a Senate investigation), it doesn't protect the banking system, it does exactly the opposite. It terrifies investors and depositors everywhere, leaving them with the clear impression that even the most "reputable" banks may in fact be captured institutions whose senior executives are in the employ of (this can't be repeated often enough) murderers and terrorists. Even more shocking, the Justice Department's response to learning about all of this was to do exactly the same thing that the HSBC executives did in the first place to get themselves in trouble – they took money to look the other way. And not only did they sell out to drug dealers, they sold out cheap. You'll hear bragging this week by the Obama administration that they wrested a record penalty from HSBC, but it's a joke. Some of the penalties involved will literally make you laugh out loud. This is from Breuer's announcement: As a result of the government's investigation, HSBC has . . . "clawed back" deferred compensation bonuses given to some of its most senior U.S. anti-money laundering and compliance officers, and agreed to partially defer bonus compensation for its most senior officials during the five-year period of the deferred prosecution agreement. Wow. So the executives who spent a decade laundering billions of dollars will have to partially defer their bonuses during the five-year deferred prosecution agreement? Are you fucking kidding me? That's the punishment? The government's negotiators couldn't hold firm on forcing HSBC officials to completely wait to receive their ill-gotten bonuses? They had to settle on making them "partially" wait? Every honest prosecutor in America has to be puking his guts out at such bargaining tactics. What was the Justice Department's opening offer – asking executives to restrict their Caribbean vacation time to nine weeks a year? So you might ask, what's the appropriate financial penalty for a bank in HSBC's position? Exactly how much money should one extract from a firm that has been shamelessly profiting from business with criminals for years and years? Remember, we're talking about a company that has admitted to a smorgasbord of serious banking crimes. If you're the prosecutor, you've got this bank by the balls. So how much money should you take? How about all of it? How about every last dollar the bank has made since it started its illegal activity? How about you dive into every bank account of every single executive involved in this mess and take every last bonus dollar they've ever earned? Then take their houses, their cars, the paintings they bought at Sotheby's auctions, the clothes in their closets, the loose change in the jars on their kitchen counters, every last freaking thing. Take it all and don't think twice. And then throw them in jail. Sound harsh? It does, doesn't it? The only problem is, that's exactly what the government does just about every day to ordinary people involved in ordinary drug cases. It'd be interesting, for instance, to ask the residents of Tenaha, Texas what they think about the HSBC settlement. That's the town where local police routinely pulled over (mostly black) motorists and, whenever they found cash, offered motorists a choice: They could either allow police to seize the money, or face drug and money laundering charges. Or we could ask Anthony Smelley, the Indiana resident who won $50,000 in a car accident settlement and was carrying about $17K of that in cash in his car when he got pulled over. Cops searched his car and had drug dogs sniff around: The dogs alerted twice. No drugs were found, but police took the money anyway. Even after Smelley produced documentation proving where he got the money from, Putnam County officials tried to keep the money on the grounds that he could have used the cash to buy drugs in the future. Seriously, that happened. It happens all the time, and even Lanny Breuer's own Justice Deparment gets into the act. In 2010 alone, U.S. Attorneys' offices deposited nearly $1.8 billion into government accounts as a result of forfeiture cases, most of them drug cases. You can see the Justice Department's own statistics right here: Justice Department If you get pulled over in America with cash and the government even thinks it's drug money, that cash is going to be buying your local sheriff or police chief a new Ford Expeditiontomorrow afternoon. And that's just the icing on the cake. The real prize you get for interacting with a law enforcement officer, if you happen to be connected in any way with drugs, is a preposterous, outsized criminal penalty. Right here in New York, one out of every seven cases that ends up in court is a marijuana case. Just the other day, while Breuer was announcing his slap on the wrist for the world's most prolific drug-launderers, I was in arraignment court in Brooklyn watching how they deal with actual people. A public defender explained the absurdity of drug arrests in this city. New York actually has fairly liberal laws about pot – police aren't supposed to bust you if you possess the drug in private. So how do police work around that to make 50,377 pot-related arrests in a single year, just in this city? Tthat was 2010; the 2009 number was 46,492.) "What they do is, they stop you on the street and tell you to empty your pockets," the public defender explained. "Then the instant a pipe or a seed is out of the pocket – boom, it's 'public use.' And you get arrested." People spend nights in jail, or worse. In New York, even if they let you off with a misdemeanor and time served, you have to pay $200 and have your DNA extracted – a process that you have to pay for (it costs 50 bucks). But even beyond that, you won't have search very far for stories of draconian, idiotic sentences for nonviolent drug crimes. Just ask Cameron Douglas, the son of Michael Douglas, who got five years in jail for simple possession. His jailers kept him in solitary for 23 hours a day for 11 months and denied him visits with family and friends. Although your typical non-violent drug inmate isn't the white child of a celebrity, he's usually a minority user who gets far stiffer sentences than rich white kids would for committing the same crimes – we all remember the crack-versus-coke controversy in which federal and state sentencing guidelines left (predominantly minority) crack users serving sentences up to 100 times harsher than those meted out to the predominantly white users of powdered coke. The institutional bias in the crack sentencing guidelines was a racist outrage, but this HSBC settlement blows even that away. By eschewing criminal prosecutions of major drug launderers on the grounds (the patently absurd grounds, incidentally) that their prosecution might imperil the world financial system, the government has now formalized the double standard. They're now saying that if you're not an important cog in the global financial system, you can't get away with anything, not even simple possession. You will be jailed and whatever cash they find on you they'll seize on the spot, and convert into new cruisers or toys for your local SWAT team, which will be deployed to kick in the doors of houses where more such inessential economic cogs as you live. If you don't have a systemically important job, in other words, the government's position is that your assets may be used to finance your own political disenfranchisement. On the other hand, if you are an important person, and you work for a big international bank, you won't be prosecuted even if you launder nine billion dollars. Even if you actively collude with the people at the very top of the international narcotics trade, your punishment will be far smaller than that of the person at the very bottom of the world drug pyramid. You will be treated with more deference and sympathy than a junkie passing out on a subway car in Manhattan (using two seats of a subway car is a common prosecutable offense in this city). An international drug trafficker is a criminal and usually a murderer; the drug addict walking the street is one of his victims. But thanks to Breuer, we're now in the business, officially, of jailing the victims and enabling the criminals. This is the disgrace to end all disgraces. It doesn't even make any sense. There is no reason why the Justice Department couldn't have snatched up everybody at HSBC involved with the trafficking, prosecuted them criminally, and worked with banking regulators to make sure that the bank survived the transition to new management. As it is, HSBC has had to replace virtually all of its senior management. The guilty parties were apparently not so important to the stability of the world economy that they all had to be left at their desks. So there is absolutely no reason they couldn't all face criminal penalties. That they are not being prosecuted is cowardice and pure corruption, nothing else. And by approving this settlement, Breuer removed the government's moral authority to prosecute anyone for any other drug offense. Not that most people didn't already know that the drug war is a joke, but this makes it official. Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/outrageous-hsbc-settlement-proves-the-drug-war-is-a-joke-20121213#ixzz2FSB677da Follow us: @rollingstone on Twitter | RollingStone on Facebook

Abe 2.0 Begins - Step 1 Remove All Budget Limits; JGB Yields Crack Posted: 18 Dec 2012 05:55 PM PST Well that did not take long. T+2 days from his re-election, Shinzo Abe has summarily unbudgeted himself. As Kyodo News reports, the sphincterially-challenged wild-man has decided to scrap the country's spending cap for the annual budget. Previously capped at a measly JPY71 trillion (excluding debt-servicing costs) in an effort to create some pretense of fiscal discipline, the new Keynesian has unilaterally decided that moar is better. Not exactly helping, though perhaps exactly what the currency-war-inflaming Abe might like, the trade balance plunged yet again (to -JPY953bn from -JPY540bn) from  - setting a new all-time record negative average as the implicit capital flight continues. JPY weakness has resumed but it is the collapse in JGBs that will be worrying people - the biggest 5-day run-up in 10Y JGB yields in over 13 months.   10Y JGB yields are on a tear...breaking above the 100DMA...     Japan's Trade Balance pushes further and further south...   AsiaPac not having a great night overall with Aussie Leading Indicators plunging to their lowest in nine months...   Chart: Bloomberg

David Morgan & Alan Butler talk SILVER – YouTube Posted: 18 Dec 2012 05:47 PM PST is Au and Ag intrinsically money? YES. Until... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website http://goldbasics.blogspot.com for full Content ]]

Marc Faber’s Beliefs About Gold Posted: 18 Dec 2012 05:40 PM PST Marc Faber is one of the very successful... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website http://goldbasics.blogspot.com for full Content ]]

Berlusconi: "Italy May Be Forced To Leave The Eurozone And Return To The Lira" Posted: 18 Dec 2012 05:10 PM PST Reminding the world of just the kind of truthiness that got him sacked originally by that other Italian, the Ex-Goldmanite Mario Draghi, back in November 2011, and which the world has to look forward to when Silvio Berlusconi returns to power some time in 2013, even if not as PM (a position he currently has a snowball's chance in hell of regaining based on current political polls), Reuters informs us that the Italian, who certainly has not read the Goldman book on status quo perpetuation, just said the unimaginable: the truth. To wit: "If Germany doesn't accept that the ECB must be a real central bank, if interest rates don't come down, we will be forced to leave the euro and return to our own currency in order to be competitive." Berlusconi said in comments reported by Italian news agencies Ansa and Agi. The 76-year-old media tycoon has made similar remarks in the past about the possibility of Italy, or even Germany, leaving the euro, but has often at least partially rectified them later." Not this time. Now with Germany and the Buba folding like a broken chair, Silvio is coming back and knows he can demand anything and everything, and Germany has no choice but to accept, Merkel reelection in a few months be damned. Perhaps the former PM who recently got engaged to this 28 year old girl who obviously loves him for his personality has read our little primer on what happens in a Europe in which external devaluation (i.e., FX) is not a possibility, and where another 30-50% drop in PIIGS salaries would be neccesary to restore competitiveness. That, or a return to the Lira of course. And Berlusconi has seen that in the duel between Greece and Germany so far the former (and specifically its creditors) have gotten all the advantage. It is only a matter of time before he parlays that negotiating approach to Italy as well, and in the process destabilizes whatever artificial balance the ECB may have created. More from Reuters: Former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi said on Tuesday Italy would be forced to leave the euro zone unless the European Central Bank gets more powers to ensure lower borrowing costs.   Berlusconi, who announced this month he will again lead his People of Freedom party (PDL) in a national election expected in February, said on a talk-show on state broadcaster RAI that the ECB should become a lender of last resort for the currency bloc.   Berlusconi is already campaigning hard for the election with a spate of television interviews in an attempt to close the wide gap with the center-left Democratic Party which is polling at above 30 percent, some 14 points above the PDL.   Berlusconi was forced to resign as prime minister in November last year as Italian bond yields surged at the height of the euro zone debt crisis. Enjoy the little European respite ladies and gents, because in a few weeks, the Magic Money Tree-free reality is coming back with a vengeance.

'Capital Account' program with GATA's Murphy and Powell posted at SilverSeek Posted: 18 Dec 2012 05:09 PM PST 7:05p ET Tuesday, December 18, 2012 Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: Video of today's appearance by GATA Chairman Bill Murphy and your secretary/treasurer on Russia Today's "Capital Account" with Lauren Lyster has been posted at GoldSeek's companion Internet site, SilverSeek, here: http://www.silverseek.com/article/gatas-bill-murphy-chris-powell-call-ou... CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc. ADVERTISEMENT Fred Goldstein and Tim Murphy open All Pro Gold All-Pro Gold, run by long-time GATA supporters Fred Goldstein and Tim Murphy, offers its services to GATA supporters and anyone else interested in precious metals. The company brokers a full line of precious metals and numismatic coins. It aims to inform prospective clients about the importance of the monetary metals as part of a diversified financial portfolio and to keep prospective clients current with market trends. All-Pro Gold has competitive pricing and ships promptly to clients so they may have physical possession. Learn more by e-mailing Fred@allprogold.com or Tim@allprogold.com or telephone 1-855-377-4653 or visit www.allprogold.com. Join GATA here: Vancouver Resource Investment Conference Sunday-Monday, January 20 and 21, 2013 Vancouver Convention Centre West Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada http://www.cambridgehouse.com/event/vancouver-resource-investment-confer... * * * Support GATA by purchasing DVDs of our London conference in August 2011 or our Dawson City conference in August 2006: http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html Or by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: http://gata.org/tshirts 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: http://www.gata.org To contribute to GATA, please visit: http://www.gata.org/node/16 ADVERTISEMENT Opinion Around the World Is Changing in Favor of Gold -- Find Out Why When Deutschebank calls gold "good money" and paper "bad money". ... http://www.gata.org/node/11765 When the president of the German central bank, the Bundesbank, pays tribute to gold as "a timeless classic". ... http://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphbenko/2012/09/24/signs-of-the-gold-stan... When a leading member of the policy committee of the People's Bank of China calls the gold standard "an excellent monetary system". ... http://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphbenko/2012/10/01/signs-of-the-gold-stan... When a CNN reporter writes in The China Post that the "gold commission" plank in the 2012 Republican platform will "reverberate around the world". ... http://www.thegoldstandardnow.org/key-blogs/1563-china-post-the-gop-gold... When the Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy of the U.S. House of Representatives twice called on economist, historian, and gold standard advocate Lewis E. Lehrman to testify. ... World opinion is changing in favor of gold. How can you learn why and what it will mean to you? Read the newly updated and expanded edition of Lehrman's book, "The True Gold Standard." Financial journalist James Grant says of "The True Gold Standard": "If you have ever wondered how the world can get from here to there -- from the chaos of depreciating paper to a convertible currency worthy of our children and our grandchildren -- wonder no more. The answer, brilliantly expounded, is between these covers. America has long needed a modern Alexander Hamilton. In Lewis E. Lehrman she has finally found him." To buy a copy of "The True Gold Standard," please visit: http://www.thegoldstandardnow.com/publications/the-true-gold-standard

Geithner was told of Libor fears in 2008 Posted: 18 Dec 2012 04:12 PM PST By Shahien Nasiripour Financial Times, London Tuesday, December 18, 2012 http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/8e0d9282-4931-11e2-b25b-00144feab49a.html WASHINGTON -- The Federal Reserve Bank of New York was warned as early as mid-2008 that banks may have been misreporting their Libor borrowing rate to aid their own trading positions, much earlier than previously known. Tim Geithner, then president of the New York Fed and now US Treasury secretary, was told by a senior colleague in a May 2008 email of her concerns about banks' deliberate misreporting. The email was part of an internal push among some at the New York Fed to press the Bank of England and the British Bankers Association to reform the benchmark lending gauge, known as the London Interbank Offered Rate. It is the first indication that officials at the New York Fed had grown suspicious that banks may have been misreporting Libor to improve their trading results. Officials already had suspected banks were under-reporting their borrowing costs to mask the state of their financial health. ... Dispatch continues below ... ADVERTISEMENT Opinion Around the World Is Changing in Favor of Gold -- Find Out Why When Deutschebank calls gold "good money" and paper "bad money". ... http://www.gata.org/node/11765 When the president of the German central bank, the Bundesbank, pays tribute to gold as "a timeless classic". ... http://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphbenko/2012/09/24/signs-of-the-gold-stan... When a leading member of the policy committee of the People's Bank of China calls the gold standard "an excellent monetary system". ... http://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphbenko/2012/10/01/signs-of-the-gold-stan... When a CNN reporter writes in The China Post that the "gold commission" plank in the 2012 Republican platform will "reverberate around the world". ... http://www.thegoldstandardnow.org/key-blogs/1563-china-post-the-gop-gold... When the Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy of the U.S. House of Representatives twice called on economist, historian, and gold standard advocate Lewis E. Lehrman to testify. ... World opinion is changing in favor of gold. How can you learn why and what it will mean to you? Read the newly updated and expanded edition of Lehrman's book, "The True Gold Standard." Financial journalist James Grant says of "The True Gold Standard": "If you have ever wondered how the world can get from here to there -- from the chaos of depreciating paper to a convertible currency worthy of our children and our grandchildren -- wonder no more. The answer, brilliantly expounded, is between these covers. America has long needed a modern Alexander Hamilton. In Lewis E. Lehrman she has finally found him." To buy a copy of "The True Gold Standard," please visit: http://www.thegoldstandardnow.com/publications/the-true-gold-standard The emails from Hayley Boesky to Mr Geithner -- with three senior colleagues, Meg McConnell, Matthew Raskin, and William Dudley, copied in -- are among unreported emails seen by the FT that show New York Fed officials linking the incentive for banks to misreport borrowing rates to the bank's derivatives positions. The plea by Ms Boesky, sent a few days before Mr Geithner made Libor reform recommendations to Sir Mervyn King, governor of the BoE, is perhaps the first indication that senior US officials suspected traders may have been influencing banks' Libor submissions. "These individuals report to the head of [the] money markets desk, who often reports to the same person who oversees the derivatives book. They verify the posting with the boss to make sure it suits their derivatives position," Ms Boesky wrote on May 23, 2008. The US Congress has launched an inquiry into Libor. In July the New York Fed made public selected documents related to alleged Libor-rigging by Barclays, which had just reached a $450 million settlement with US and UK authorities. Barclays admitted to taking requests from its own derivatives traders and those at other banks into account when making submissions to Libor and Euribor, the euro equivalent, from 2005 to 2007. The New York Fed documents played down the possibility of a link between alleged rate manipulation to traders' derivatives positions. Rather, in those documents New York Fed officials linked Libor misreporting to banks' fears of appearing financially weak. A global investigation spanning multiple continents now threatens as many as 20 banks and inter-broker dealers that may have been involved in manipulating interbank rates influencing hundreds of trillions of dollars' worth of financial instruments from 2005 to 2009. Other emails seen by the FT at the New York Fed raised concerns about the possible influence of derivatives traders. On May 1, 2008, Deborah Leonard, a senior New York Fed official, speculated in an email to colleagues about what she referred to as the "lying premium" theory about Libor submissions. She said there could be an "incentive to lie" by banks if a large number of derivatives  used  a particular Libor rate as a reference. In a June 3, 2008 email, Matthew Raskin of the New York Fed noted to colleagues that a pending BBA proposal on Libor best practice stated that rates should be "submitted by members  . . .  with responsibility for management of a bank's cash, rather than a bank's derivatives book," and that "rates must  . . .  not [be] set in reference to information given by brokers." Mr Raskin wrote in his email: "While these statements are meant to describe the current state of Libor, they are not consistent with practices described by panel members we've spoken with, nor with market perceptions of the process." Other authorities seem to have shared these concerns. In a July 14, 2008, email, one Fed official noted that the "principal concern" at the International Monetary Fund "centred on who at the banks provided the Libor quotes -- ie making sure the rates come from funding desks as opposed to derivatives traders." A New York Fed spokeswoman said it had determined by "early 2008" that Libor was unreliable, and briefed officials in the US and UK in an effort to address the flawed rate-setting process in London and possible "conflicts of interest" at the banks. "The New York Fed developed tough reform proposals including plans for independent audit of Libor submissions to prevent Libor misreporting, whatever the reason, and pressed the UK authorities to adopt them." A Treasury spokeswoman said: "The record confirms that as president of the New York Fed, Secretary Geithner helped to identify the problems with Libor, briefed Treasury and US regulatory agencies on the issue, and pressed for reform by the British Bankers Association of the Libor rate-setting process in London, and we welcome the significant international enforcement effort that followed." A representative of Ms Boesky declined to comment. * * * Join GATA here: Vancouver Resource Investment Conference Sunday-Monday, January 20 and 21, 2013 Vancouver Convention Centre West Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada http://www.cambridgehouse.com/event/vancouver-resource-investment-confer... * * * Support GATA by purchasing DVDs of our London conference in August 2011 or our Dawson City conference in August 2006: http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html Or by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: http://gata.org/tshirts 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: http://www.gata.org To contribute to GATA, please visit: http://www.gata.org/node/16 ADVERTISEMENT Fred Goldstein and Tim Murphy open All Pro Gold Longtime GATA supporters Fred Goldstein and Tim Murphy have brought their many years of experience in the precious metals and numismatic coins to All Pro Gold as metals brokers who specialize in the delivery of gold and silver bullion bars and coins as well as numismatic gold and silver coins. Fred and Tim follow these markets closely and are assisted by a team of consultants in monitoring market trends. All Pro Gold offers GATA supporters competitive pricing on all bullion products and welcomes inquiries. Tim can be reached at 602-299-2585 and Tim@allprogold.com, Fred at 602-799-8378 and Fred@allprogold.com. Ask about their ratio strategy and the relationship of generic $20 dollar gold pieces to 1-ounce gold bullion coins. Visit their Internet site at http://www.allprogold.com/.

James Turk: Auditors, not queen, should have visited Bank of England gold vault Posted: 18 Dec 2012 03:53 PM PST 5:45p ET Tuesday, December 18, 2012 Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: In the second installment of his interview today with King World News, GoldMoney founder and GATA consultant James Turk says that Queen Elizabeth should not have been sent into the Bank of England's gold vault -- some auditors should have been. An excerpt from the interview is posted at the King World News blog here: http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2012/12/18_T... CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc. ADVERTISEMENT GoldMoney adds Singapore vaulting option In addition to its precious metals storage facilities in Hong Kong, Switzerland, Toronto, and the United Kingdom, now with GoldMoney you can store gold and silver in Singapore in a high-security vault operated by Brink's Singapore Pte Limited. To celebrate the launch of this storage option, GoldMoney is offering a discount on buy and exchange fees at this vault for any orders above US$10,000 (or the equivalent) until January 11, 2013. Tthe gold buy rate is 0.98%, while the silver rate is 1.99%. Metal exchanges into Brink's Singapore will also be discounted for this period and will be charged at 0.78% for gold and 1.75% for silver. Simply place your order online and the above rates apply automatically until January 11, 2013, 15.00 UK time. To find out more about the new vault, please visit: http://www.goldmoney.com/singapore?gmrefcode=gata GoldMoney customers can take delivery of any number of gold, silver, platinum, and palladium bars from any GoldMoney vault, as well as personally collect their bars stored in the Hong Kong, Switzerland, and U.K. vaults. It's easy to open an account, add funds, and liquidate your investment. For more information, visit: http://www.goldmoney.com/?gmrefcode=gata Join GATA here: Vancouver Resource Investment Conference Sunday-Monday, January 20 and 21, 2013 Vancouver Convention Centre West Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada http://www.cambridgehouse.com/event/vancouver-resource-investment-confer... * * * Support GATA by purchasing DVDs of our London conference in August 2011 or our Dawson City conference in August 2006: http://www.goldrush21.com/order.html Or by purchasing a colorful GATA T-shirt: http://gata.org/tshirts 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: http://www.gata.org To contribute to GATA, please visit: http://www.gata.org/node/16

The Gold & Silver Price Dipped Today Posted: 18 Dec 2012 03:49 PM PST "The markets are now well and truly broken. Not because they don't conform to my predictions, but because they are no longer sending useful price signals." This quote comes from Chris Martenson his latest editorial. We believe it perfectly describes the gold and silver price action of the past days, and especially today (December 18th, 2012). The charts show both gold and silver took a dive today. They did not close the trading session on the lowest point of the day. What follows are some commentaries about the precious metals price action. It's almost amusing how some commentators are attaching so much importance to headlines. Could a safe haven really lose its status in one day? The first quote comes from Marketwatch: "Gold is not looking like a safe haven as Greece gets an upgrade and going over the fiscal cliff looks less likely," said Phil Flynn, senior market analyst at the Price Futures Group. "Stocks look like a better bet and bond yields are providing a better return." Jim Wyckoff has an extensive background of 25 years in the markets and commented today on Kitco: There is no doubt in my mind that bigger players in the market place can and do manipulate markets—on a short-term basis. The big boys like to catch the market in thin, low-volume conditions so they can have as big of a desired price impact as possible when they execute their bigger trades. Such activity is not exclusive to the gold and silver markets. It happens in nearly all traded markets—and it is nothing new. Additionally, Ronald Stoeferle (precious metals analyst and editor of the "In Gold We Trust" reports) explained how these short term takedowns in thinly traded markets mean nothing in the bigger picture. The intra-day or intra-week price actions could be designed and can go into all directions. They should not be a guide for investors. That view was extended by Mineweb today: Given the amount of paper gold futures that have been sold, those doing the selling must be wondering how long they can keep this up given they have only managed to knock the price back a few percent.  The volume trades, seemingly designed to drive the price down below various stop loss positions and thus make the falls self perpetuating in these days of computer-driven trading, are patently only succeeding to take the price down to another point where perhaps an even bigger position holder is buying.  The finger tends to point at China in this respect given a number of statements from various senior officials suggesting that a) China needs to increase its reserve holdings b) that it is buying on dips and c) that it needs to keep the population happy and has been in the persuasion business of telling its rapidly growing middle classes that gold and silver are great assets in which to invest. It comes all down to staying focused on the big picture and controling oneself. In that regard, nobody is better positioned than Jim Sinclair to share his words of wisdom. He sent out the following message earlier today (source: JSMineset): This is capitulation everywhere. This event has been a manufactured market move since $1800, with clearly planned and executed intervention. The gold price take downs during low volume periods internationally is a known price moving only tactic. I simply shut off the machine because all the regular causes for the gold price will make themselves effective with time. A manufactured market event will not change the trend. Even the most professional can be reduced to sheeple by their emotions. Like every mistake made by Westerners, what you see today is simply driving gold into Asian control.

Safe Havens Jettisoned Posted: 18 Dec 2012 03:37 PM PST By Dan Norcini 18-Dec (Trader Dan's Market View) — Apparently we now live in world in which lawmakers squabbling over how to avert tripping over an anthill instead of plunging down into the abyss gives reason to buy stocks while selling nearly anything that appears to be a safe haven. I find it ironic to say the least that the market analysts continue to be so fixated on the non-sensically named, 'fiscal cliff', when the country is on track to have a national debt of over $20TRILLION by the end of the next 4 years and how many more trillions in unfunded liabilities. Economic growth is so anemic that the Fed will be conjuring the sum of $1.02TRILLION into existence over the course of the next year in order to buy mortgage backed securities and US Treasury obligations with the sole purpose of keeping interest rates ultra low so as to encourage additional debt. Yet everything is okay now because Obama and Boehner are talking and moving closer. Oh well, it is what it is and there is not much sense in even looking at things in bewilderment anymore. The new era of "PRINT YOUR WAY TO PROSPERITY" apparently is now fully entrenched in this generation. …The problem that many of us who are long term gold bulls have is precisely that – we are "LONG TERM" thinkers. In the meantime, our markets today have become completely short-sighted forums. [source]

The Gold Price Closed Down at $1,669.50 and so I Bought Today Posted: 18 Dec 2012 03:23 PM PST Gold Price Close Today : 1669.50 Change : -27.50 or -1.62% Silver Price Close Today : 31.595 Change : -0.611 or -1.90% Gold Silver Ratio Today : 52.841 Change : 0.149 or 0.28% Silver Gold Ratio Today : 0.01892 Change : -0.000053 or -0.28% Platinum Price Close Today : 1594.50 Change : -15.00 or -0.93% Palladium Price Close Today : 689.85 Change : -7.35 or -1.05% S&P 500 : 1,446.79 Change : 16.43 or 1.15% Dow In GOLD$ : $165.31 Change : $ 4.10 or 2.55% Dow in GOLD oz : 7.997 Change : 0.199 or 2.55% Dow in SILVER oz : 422.57 Change : 11.61 or 2.82% Dow Industrial : 13,350.96 Change : 115.57 or 0.87% US Dollar Index : 79.57 Change : -0.067 or -0.08% Even thought the dollar fell a hefty 19.6 basis points (0.25%) today to 79.343, stocks rose and the silver and GOLD PRICE fell. I said yesterday that silver and gold looked tired, and they were. Rejoice, turn somersaults! This is what we've been waiting for. The SILVER PRICE fell today 61.1 cents to 3159.5c. At its low it hit 3136, NOT coincidentally the 300 day moving average, one of my targets. Think: silver might drop to the 200 DMA still, at 3088c, or it might stop at the uptrend from the June low, now about 3080c. Finally, it might even fall all the way to the downtrend line from the 4/2011 high, now about 2900c. If the worst happened and silver fell from here to 2900c, that's only an 8.3% downside risk. And today might have been the end of it. Personally, I bought a good bit of silver today. The GOLD PRICE fell $27.50 to $1,669.50, right above the 150 DMA at 1,668.05. Low came below that at $1,662.70. The 150 and 200 DMA ($1,663.43) are right beside each other, so that low hit 'em both today. That could be the end of gold's fall. What if it ain't? Then it could fall to the uptrend line form the June 2012 low, now about $1,648, or even the downtrend line from the September 2011 high, now about $1,620. I doubt it. I doubt either silver or gold will fall much further. I bought gold today, too, and would have bought more if I had been able to find small gold coins, which have lately all but disappeared. But I would have bought today even if I had been fairly certain both metals would fall further. Why? Just because I like to empty my pockets? No, because I've learned that I do not know everything and cannot see the future perfectly, so I have to force myself to buy a logical, pre-determined price targets. I don't always win, doing that, but I at least I don't have to stare at a chart and ask myself, "Why in the world didn't I buy when it was so low?" Anybody who wants to wait for the perfect price, feel free to do so. I don't do that any more. I've got to scoot out of here early and take a much-needed break with my wife. Driving up to Cookeville and nearby Hidden Springs Nursery, a magical place hidden in a great rift in the earth like something out of an Edgar Rice Burroughs novels. And they raise great nursery stock, especially a hybrid Honey Locust that has no thorns but produces plenty of those sweet pods that horses, goats, cattle, pigs, sheep, and everything else loves to eat. Back tomorrow, God willing. Stocks finally made it to, and probably through, 13,300. Dow added 115.57 (0.87%) today to close at 13,350.96. S&P4500 rose 16.43 (1.15%) to 1,446.79. Exuberant enthusiasm. Let 'em spasm all by themselves. This stock rally is most likely the last one before the big plunge. Argentum et aurum comparenda sunt -- -- Gold and silver must be bought. - Franklin Sanders, The Moneychanger The-MoneyChanger.com 1-888-218-9226 10:00am-5:00pm CST, Monday-Friday © 2012, 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 $195.66; stocks' primary trend is down, targeting Dow under 2,900 and worth only one ounce of gold; US$ or 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. No, I don't.

Is There a Best Way to Return to a Gold Standard? Posted: 18 Dec 2012 03:05 PM PST Many of us see hair-curling rates of price inflation not too far down the road. Today inflation is hardly noticeable. But what's coming will be so painful and so disruptive that soaring prices will become the voting public's number-one complaint. Read More...

Bernanke: Gold’s BFF Posted: 18 Dec 2012 02:42 PM PST By Ned W Schmidt CFA 18-Dec (FinancialSense) — To date seems only one group truly loves the monetary policy of the Federal Reserve. Largely, that group is comprised of bankers and bond dealers that profit from selling bonds to the Federal Reserve. Bernanke and the bond dealers have become BFF, Best Friends Forever. Perhaps the time has arrived for Gold investors to be less critical of Bernanke's policies. Instead, we might want to consider that Bernanke could be our BFF too. With a continuation of the intellectually bankrupt policy called quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve we may now have a Bernanke "Put" on Gold. [source]

Gold Seeker Closing Report: Gold and Silver Fall Almost 2% Posted: 18 Dec 2012 02:39 PM PST Gold fell $36.70 to $1661.30 by early afternoon in New York before it rallied back higher in the last couple of hours of trade, but it still ended with a loss of 1.48%. Silver slumped to as low as $31.35 and ended with a loss of 1.77%.

Euro Yen Cross - Redux Posted: 18 Dec 2012 02:23 PM PST [url]http://www.traderdannorcini.blogspot.com/[/url] [url]http://www.fortwealth.com/[/url] It has been several years since I last posted a chart of the Euro-Yen currency cross. Quite frankly, there has been no reason to monitor it in my opinion, not with the ongoing crisis that had engulfed the Euro Zone through most of this now fading year. However, with the strong move lower in the Yen of late, I have been examining this cross once again to see if it can provide us with any signals of upcoming events. You will note its collapse back in 2008 - this was the year in which the big Japanese Yen Carry Trade was unwound as nearly every hedge fund on the planet was taking part in tthat particular trade. When it was time to unwind it during the panic, there was literally no one on the other side of all those trades involving the Carrry. During that Carry trade season, as this currency cross moved higher, the price of commodities in general tended to track right along with it. Gold in parti...

Bernanke: Gold's BFF Posted: 18 Dec 2012 02:08 PM PST To date seems only one group truly loves the monetary policy of the Federal Reserve. Largely, that group is comprised of bankers and bond dealers that profit from selling bonds to the Federal Reserve. Read More...

The New Cold War Posted: 18 Dec 2012 02:04 PM PST December 18, 2012 [LIST] [*]More "gray swan" events on the horizon... U.S. monkeying in China's business... plus, a trade to kick off the beta version of the new 5 Min. Forecast Pro! [*]Dr. Copper's forecast relatively calm in 2013... how can that be... a new ETF to rival GLD... [*]The "Fed fake" and market melt-up... how to trade the last week of December... don't smoke it, swallow it... [*]AIG jackass caught vaunting on tape... an Aussie woman proves it pays to get [expletive deleted, rhymes with "fade"]... off-screen comments regarding the Newtown massacre... and more. [/LIST] "We don't intend to worsen relations between Japan and China," Japan's new prime minister Shinzo Abe said in a press conference yesterday. He then went on to do just that... We begin this morning's 5 with another specimen for our "making the empire pay" file. And a new way to trade otherwise inscrutable chatter from the news cycle. Let's connect the do...

Confiscation of Gold – Then What? (Part 2/4) Posted: 18 Dec 2012 02:00 PM PST There you sit with gold as a key investment. You did not want to trust the banks or gold ETF's or the derivatives market with your gold investments, despite the prospect of short-term gains. You want your gold for financial security in the face of economic collapse, or to supplement your needs, if hard times destroyed your other security. To make sure you were secure, you registered your gold in your name.

Net Asset Value Premiums Of Certain Precious Metal Trusts and Funds Posted: 18 Dec 2012 01:17 PM PST This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

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