Gold World News Flash |
- Gold Investor: risk management and capital preservation
- DHS to Purchase 7000 “Assault Weapons”
- The Euro Is Far From Finished
- Why Buy Gold?
- Silver Now Very Close To A Major Short Squeeze
- Silver Update 1/30/13 Silver Reflation
- Countdown to the Collapse
- Gold mitigates foreign-exchange risk when investing in emerging markets
- Gold and Quantitative Easing: Inflation All Over Again?
- U.S. gold, silver production down in 2012—USGS
- US 4th QTR GDP STINKS...But, "The Market Is UP"!!!
- Asian Financial Forum 2013 Highlights Day Two – YouTube
- Daily Recap of the Charts Jan. 30 – YouTube
- The Rise Of America's Lunatic Fringe
- Rick Ackerman: Why isn't gold higher?
- Stock market correction ahead? – YouTube
- Peter Schiff & Doug Casey On Gold, Investor Cluelessness, And The "Escape From America" Plan
- Elliott's Paul Singer On How Money Is Created... And How It Dies
- What the Fed’s Announcement Means for Gold – YouTube
- The Silver and Gold Price Jumped Higher on News of Further Inflation Gold Up $19.10 at $1,679.90
- Printing Money Laid Bare: The "Goldbugs" Reply
- Marc Faber Warns Gold & Silver investors of Economic Collapse 2013 – YouTube
- One Smart Thing (OST)
- U.S. Economy Contracts, Dollar Falls, Commodities Rise. By Gregory Mannarino – YouTube
- Ken "Ain't Different" Rogoff Crushes The Infinite Dream Of Crude Keynesian Stimulus
- BlackBerry Exec On BlackBerry 10 – YouTube
- US economy shrinks for first time since 2009 – YouTube
- Guest Post: The New Regime For Precious Metals
- January US Gold & Silver Eagle Sales Into Perspective
- Richard Russell - Silver Interesting, Massive Short Position
- Doug Casey's Current View of the World
- THE GUYS WHO RUN THE WORLD
- Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Rally on FOMC Day
- Gold Seeker Closing Report: Gold and Silver Gain About 1% and 2%
- Stocks Catch-Down To Credit As Silver Surges
- Gold Resource Corporation Declares January Monthly Dividend
| Gold Investor: risk management and capital preservation Posted: 31 Jan 2013 02:30 AM PST |
| DHS to Purchase 7000 “Assault Weapons” Posted: 31 Jan 2013 01:30 AM PST from Silver Prepper: |
| Posted: 31 Jan 2013 12:10 AM PST My Dear Extended Family and Euro Ex-Pat Snobs, Read and weep you expat euro snobs that swore the euro was finished. Those who looked me in face as if I was mad at lunch when bullish long term on the falling euro. Gold is why the euro is doing what it is doing, and Continue reading The Euro Is Far From Finished |
| Posted: 31 Jan 2013 12:05 AM PST (January 2013) Gold has been real money (medium of exchange and a store of value) for over 3,000 years. It is still real money. Gold has no counter-party risk. It is not someone else’s... {This is a content summary only. Click on the blog title to continue reading this post, share your comments, browse the website, and more!}    |
| Silver Now Very Close To A Major Short Squeeze Posted: 31 Jan 2013 12:00 AM PST from KingWorldNews:
We will see the first round of short covering in silver when it breaks $32.50. There are a number of speculative shorts in that market. These shorts are weak hands and on a break of $32.50 they will capitulate. This short covering should move silver $2 higher very quickly. |
| Silver Update 1/30/13 Silver Reflation Posted: 30 Jan 2013 11:02 PM PST from BrotheJohnF: Freedom Girl and Slave Queen are available HERE. |
| Posted: 30 Jan 2013 11:00 PM PST by John Butler, Financial Sense:
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| Gold mitigates foreign-exchange risk when investing in emerging markets Posted: 30 Jan 2013 11:00 PM PST Investors in emerging market assets can use gold to reduce the risks associated with exchange-rate volatility and benefit from significant cost efficiencies, according to a new report from the World Gold Council. Exchange-rate risk is a serious and increasingly relevant issue as investors in the US and other developed economies look beyond their domestic markets to diversify their portfolios and pursue opportunities for greater returns. |
| Gold and Quantitative Easing: Inflation All Over Again? Posted: 30 Jan 2013 10:00 PM PST by Przemyslaw Radomski, Gold Seek:
The beginning of the economic crisis is usually linked with the date of September 15, 2008 when the U.S.-based investment bank Lehman Brother filled in for bankruptcy. Lehman Brothers went down with a bang, sending shockwaves through the financial markets and effectively beginning the global banking crisis. |
| U.S. gold, silver production down in 2012—USGS Posted: 30 Jan 2013 09:00 PM PST U.S. gold mine production declined slightly in 2012, although Nevada retained its status as the top U.S. metals producer with combined mineral production valued at $11.2 billion. by Dorothy Kosich, MineWeb.com
The estimated value of mineral raw materials produced at U.S. mines was $76.5 billion, a slight increase from $74.8 billion in 2011, according to the USGS. Estimated total value of U.S. metal mine production in 2012 was $34.9 billion, down 3% from 2011. Principal contributors to the total value of metal mine production last year were gold (36%), copper (27%), iron ore (15%), molybdenum (10%), and zinc (4%). Average prices for most domestically mined metals decreased in 2012. |
| US 4th QTR GDP STINKS...But, "The Market Is UP"!!! Posted: 30 Jan 2013 08:21 PM PST GDP Shows Surprise Drop for US in Fourth QuarterAP Published: Wednesday, 30 Jan 2013 | 8:11 AM ET  Getty Images The U.S. economy posted a stunning drop of 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter, defying expectations for slow growth and possibly providing incentive for more Federal Reserve stimulus. The economy shrank from October through December for the first time since the recession ended, hurt by the biggest cut in defense spending in 40 years, fewer exports and sluggish growth in company stockpiles. The Commerce Department said Wednesday that the economy contracted at an annual rate of 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter. That's a sharp slowdown from the 3.1 percent growth rate in the July-September quarter. The surprise contraction could raise fears about the economy's ability to handle tax increases that took effect in January and looming spending cuts. [No kidding? I could swear it was only yesterday that the President assured us that by asking the rich to pay "their fair share" of taxes, the economy would flourish and our debt problem would drift away.] Still, the weakness may be because of one-time factors. Government spending cuts and slower inventory growth subtracted a total of 2.6 percentage points from growth. [Yes, the propaganda masters at AP would love for us to believe that government spending cuts "caused" a decline in GDP...After all, the President says we can't cut spending or we will risk America's "recovery". But did the US Government really cut spending in the 4th qtr? [...in Q4, the US added some $312 billion in debt. And more to the point, the US government spent a grand total of $907.9 billion in the same quarter. This compares to $877.1 billion a quarter earlier: $30 billion less.] And those volatile categories offset faster growth in consumer spending, business investment and housing -- the economy's core drivers of growth. Another positive aspect of the report: For all of 2012, the economy expanded 2.2 percent, better than 2011's growth of 1.8 percent. [So, as I see it, The US added $1.2 TRILLION in new debt in 2012 and got a +0.4% increase in annual GDP? Well, at least "the market is up"!] The economy may stay weak at the start of the year because Americans are coming to grips with an increase in Social Security taxes that has left them with less take-home pay. [May stay week at the start of the year? That's wishful thinking! Unless their "less take home" pay is temporary, it would be difficult to see the economy gaining much strength anytime soon. But, at least "the market is up"! Subpar growth has held back hiring. The economy has created about 150,000 jobs a month, on average, for the past two years. That's barely enough to reduce the unemployment rate, which has been 7.8 percent for the past two months. Economists forecast that unemployment stayed at the still-high rate again this month. The government releases the January jobs report Friday. [Are these the same economists that forecast 4th qtr GDP would be +1.1%?] The slower growth in stockpiles comes after a big jump in the third quarter. Companies frequently cut back on inventories if they anticipate a slowdown in sales. Slower inventory growth means factories likely produced less. Heavy equipment maker Caterpillar, Inc. said this week that it reduced its inventories by $2 billion in the fourth quarter as global sales declined from a year earlier. The biggest question going forward is how consumers react to the expiration of a Social Security tax cut. Congress and the White House allowed the temporary tax cut to expire in January, but reached a deal to keep income taxes from rising on most Americans. [Unless of course you were part of the 77% of Americans whose taxes rose when the Social Security tax cut expired. Buy hey, at least "the market is up"! The tax increase will lower take home pay this year by about 2 percent. That means a household earning $50,000 a year will have about $1,000 less to spend. A household with two high-paid workers will have up to $4,500 less. [And everybody knows, thanks to AP and the other mainstream news media propaganda masters, that a decrease in incomes will only cause a "temporary" set back to the economy at the start of the year. C'mon, EVERYBODY knows it will get better in the second half of the year. We've been promised that every first half of the year since 2008. We can be certain then that "the market" will be up!] Already, a key measure of consumer confidence plummeted this month after Americans noticed the reduction in their paychecks, the Conference Board reported Tuesday. [Shhhh, consumer confidence plummeted? You'll ruin everything! No wonder this is in the second to last paragraph of this puff piece...] Economists expected the first reading on gross domestic product to show growth of 1 percent, down from the third quarter's reading of 3.1 percent. ___________________________ Why This Is 'Best-Looking' GDP Drop You'll Ever See By Jeff Cox | CNBCNegative economic growth in the fourth quarter provided a scary headline to start Wednesday's trading but probably little else in market impact.  Traders at the New York Stock Exchange, January 30, 2013. REUTERS/Brendan McDermidIn the best light, the headline drop of 0.1 percent in gross domestic product masked stronger internals regarding consumer and business spending as well as progress in the housing recovery.(Read More: GDP Shows Surprise Drop for US in Fourth Quarter) At its worst, the bad news merely provides more cover for aFederal Reserve intent on churning out stimulus until it determines the economy can survive on its own. "I don't think this negative number is going to have much legs," said Jim Paulsen, chief market strategist at Wells Capital Management in Minneapolis. The darker scenario, in fact, is actually bullish for stocks, which have ridden the wave of $3 trillion in central bank liquidity to eclipse five-year highs and push towards a new record. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke "has to keep the economy high as a kite. He has to make sure we don't sober up and realize how screwed up we are," said Peter Schiff, founder and CEO at Euro Pacific Capital in New York. "We don't have a real recovery. It's an illusion, it's a drug-induced high. The minute you take away the drugs we come down. We can't stop easing, ever." ______________________ [Appropriately 1978, at the height of the last inflationary fiscal fiasco courtesy of the US Federal Reserve] ___________________________ ___________________________ US Ends 2012 With 103.8% Debt To GDPSubmitted by Tyler Durden on 01/30/2013 - 09:38 Previously, when calculating debt/GDP metrics for the US, we naturally assumed some GDP growth in Q4. Following today's GDP data we now know what Q4 GDP is. We also know that, at least on a preliminary basis, it posted a decline on an annualized basis. This means that we now have an official print for US Debt/GDP as of December 31, 2012. The numerator, or debt: $16.432 trillion, or the debt ceiling, which as we know was breached on the same day, and which has yet to be formally raised. The denominator, or GDP: $15.829 trillion. This means that the formal debt/GDP is now 103.8% and growing fast. ___________________________  Santelli Blasts Bernanke: "Whatever You're Doing, It Isn't Working"Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/30/2013 - 15:35 While some would look at the surge in government spending in Q3 last year (ahead of the election) and subsequent plunge in Q4 as conspiratorial, CNBC's Rick Santelli takes a step slightly further back as he draws the analogy between the mystical monetary experimentation of Ben Bernanke and his horde of central bank cronies and the"bloodletting of leeching" of medieval medicine providers. The point being that if you were sick in the middle ages, leeches were applied; and if you returned weeks later (still sick), more leeches and blood-letting took place - with no lesson learned. The fact that we borrowed $300bn in Q4 and managed a dismally dire drop in GDP growth offers little hope as the world glares agog at the Dow Jones Industrial Average index while Bernanke, six years on from the start of the recession continues to apply the same medicine that has done nothing to resurrect our economy. In Rick's words, "Whatever you're doing; It isn't working!" and in fact the monetary support could potentially hurt the economy in the medium-term as debt piles up exponentially. An epic rant... |
| Asian Financial Forum 2013 Highlights Day Two – YouTube Posted: 30 Jan 2013 07:51 PM PST Check our website daily at... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit http://www.figanews.com for full Content ]]  |
| Daily Recap of the Charts Jan. 30 – YouTube Posted: 30 Jan 2013 07:46 PM PST Check our website daily at... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit http://www.figanews.com for full Content ]]  |
| The Rise Of America's Lunatic Fringe Posted: 30 Jan 2013 07:43 PM PST Authored by chindit The Rise Of America's Lunatic Fringe Anyone who spends any amount of time on the internet has seen them. They are the moonbats, the wingnuts, the whackjobs, the Conspiratorialists. They are America's new Lunatic Fringe, and their numbers are growing. While the rise of the internet fed a segment of society that has always existed, as the cyberworld has become an increasingly important source of both entertainment and information, an entirely new demographic has joined what was already amongst us. Who are they and what do they believe? The Lunatic Fringe is not uniform in either its background or beliefs. Some clearly seem to be emotionally disturbed. Others are simply naïve and gullible. Still more are frustrated by an economy and a government that are behaving out of whack with what most people expected from life and from leadership. They want to believe America stands for something noble, but it is increasingly felt by them that it does not. They are confused, frustrated, disappointed, and growing angrier by the day. They feel violated and betrayed. Some harbor a diffuse rage which could blow at any time. Others have figuratively thrown in the towel and have joined the ranks of the Preppers and Survivalists. Surely the rise of this latter element, as evidenced by everything from a NatGeo show to an iPhone App, must be taken seriously and their concerns listened to if not addressed. Collectively, though individually they differ, the beliefs of the Fringe include a conspiracy behind the JFK assassination, a faked moon landing, and the current favorite: that 911 was an "inside" job. The collective also includes the Birthers, and those who believe in everything from FEMA Camps to chemtrails to that retro old favorite of Colonel Jack Ripper, fluoridation. (Those unfamiliar with these terms should Google them for more information than one might care to have.) The Fringe holds beliefs that have the world controlled variously by the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers, the Bilderbergers, Bohemian Grove, Skull and Bones, the Council on Foreign Relations, 33rd Degree Freemasons, the Vatican, the Queen of England, or just The Illuminati. Every event and every incident in the world is affected by some Master Plan carried out by whomever the believer chooses from the aforementioned gallery of rogues. For many, al Qaeda is really al CIAda, and the prime directive of that organization, along with all the other USG alphabet agencies, is to further the goals of the elite, usually through some "false flag" operation or "psy-op", and this many believe is financed through sales of illicit drugs under the guise of CIA foreign operations. Believers can "prove" each and every one of their claims via a series of cross-referenced internet links, the source of many undoubtedly just someone's fertile imagination, but very real to the believers. To the uninitiated this all seems rather humorous, albeit slightly unsettling. It would be both wrong and unwise just to slough it off as the ramblings of the insane. The reason such beliefs are gaining favor is because many Americans have lost faith and lost trust in the government and in America's elected leadership. Given what has happened over the last decade, this is not only understandable, it is even, in an odd way, reasonable. A continual drift to the fringe can be expected because of the many very real things that make the foolish things suddenly more believable. Why have the people lost faith and trust? There is a host of reasons, perhaps beginning with the war of choice in Iraq and the vociferous and passionate claims of WMD that turned out to be false. That war cost lives, cost sympathy and diplomatic capital, and cost trillions even when America was told by former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz that the war "would pay for itself from oil sales" and that "Americans would be welcomed with garlands". Neither was anything close to accurate. Instead the US has war dead, war wounded, a huge bill, fewer friends, and many more enemies. What truly exacerbated the rush to the fringe was the Financial Crisis and the subsequent railroaded bailouts, which "democratic" America opposed to the tune of 97%, and which were, and still are viewed as rewarding the very people who caused the collapse. The oft-spoken official claims that "the taxpayer made a profit on the bailouts" just adds salt to the taxpayers' wounds, as it conveniently fails to take into account the host of programs---from TALF to ZIRP to QEI, II, and III and Twist---that virtually handed the banks the money with which they could "pay back" the bailout cash. America sees backroom deals and favors to insiders every step of the way, and rightfully so they see this, because that is exactly how the bailout was undertaken. No one had to pay for his mistakes, and equally significant, no one has been prosecuted despite overwhelming evidence of fraud, malfeasance, and corruption. Americans cannot help but subscribe to the cynical quip, "everyone is equal under the law, except for those who are above it". Fines don't count, especially when the money to pay them comes right back through another door. America's prisons are filled with people who did little more than use a banned substance. It's time some bankers and officials faced the possibility of similar accommodations, should they be found guilty. Of course, first they must be prosecuted. The belief that all is not fair is further cemented when the Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer can be taped (PBS, "Frontline") saying, "Well, I think I am pursuing justice. And I think the entire responsibility of the department is to pursue justice. But in any given case, I think I and prosecutors around the country, being responsible, should speak to regulators, should speak to experts, because if I bring a case against institution A, and as a result of bringing that case, there's some huge economic effect — if it creates a ripple effect so that suddenly, counterparties and other financial institutions or other companies that had nothing to do with this are affected badly — it's a factor we need to know and understand." No matter how one parses that quote it still says the same thing: some are above the law. The American people are well aware they have been lied to by the leadership. They know that a lobbyist has an infinitely greater chance of getting his way than an entire nation of voters. They know who pays the bills---the taxpayer---as well as who pays the politicians---the lobbyists. They see the Federal Debt ballooning to Greek-like proportions, and the best Congress can do, other than take vacation or kick the can, is to tell Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to "get to work, Mr. Chairman", which means print more money, monetize the deficit, and further dilute the value of the dollar. Even some people within the government are undoubtedly growing frustrated. Imagine someone in DEA, FBI, CIA, or the military, who sees the slap on the wrist fine handed to a certain non-US bank for a decade or more of drug money laundering and laundering money for Iran, some of which might well have found its way to Hezbollah or to parties aiding the Iraqi insurgency. There are people in Waziristan who face the wrath of a drone-fired Hellfire missile with less evidence to back up the attack. This bank, incidentally, received a $3.5 billion payment-in-full upon the US taxpayer bailout of insurer AIG. When trust is gone, everything becomes an affront, a conspiracy, a power grab by the elite. The recently passed National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which gives the President incredibly broad powers, seems to obviate both habeas corpus and the entire Bill of Rights. When the trust is gone, people are less willing to believe that such a bill would never be used recklessly, or vindictively to put down vocal opponents of whatever Administration happens to be in power at the time. When trust is gone, the people question new efforts to alter the Second Amendment, even if many are personally outraged at the rash of gun violence that has come to epitomize the United States, so they rush to guns rather than run from them. When the trust is gone, the message of the Lunatic Fringe is afforded greater reception. When the trust is gone the Fringe becomes the mainstream. The government can no longer afford to ignore the Lunatic Fringe, because it is becoming less loon and more understandably and righteously indignant every day. The government did not create the Fringe, but through callous disregard, incompetence, blatant self-interest, cronyism, selective enforcement, and pandering to its financial support base, the government has fertilized the fringe until it has grown to redwood-like size. The nation's leadership is viewed not with admiration, but with distrust. It is no longer the solution, but the problem. It has reversed from friend to enemy, at least for a not insignificant portion of the citizenry. The fringe is not going to go away, and it will continue to hammer away at an already fragile society. It very well could lead to significant social unrest, even random violence. New records in the Dow will not alter the focus, nor ameliorate the bubbling rage, even if the financial media or the Federal Reserve thinks it will. This growing demographic of citizens must have their concerns addressed before it is too late. Woe to those who ignore it. To paraphrase a certain career New York Senator, "Mr. Government, get to work!" Or better yet, get out of the way. |
| Rick Ackerman: Why isn't gold higher? Posted: 30 Jan 2013 07:39 PM PST 9:50p ET Wednesday, January 30,2013 Dear Friend of GATA and Gold: Market analyst Rick Ackerman's new essay, "Why Isn't Gold Higher?," is actually another salvo in the sometimes contentious argument between inflationists and deflationists, which isn't GATA's fight. But Ackerman's essay still is delightful for ratifying some of GATA's premises: 1) Gold futures aren't reliable claims on gold. 2) Paper claims to gold have been diverting investment demand away from real metal, just as all commodity futures and derivatives long have been diverting investment demand for inflation hedges away from real things and into paper -- such diversion, suppressing commodity prices and concealing inflation, having become the primary purpose of futures and derivatives, as the British economist Peter Warburton argued in 2001 in his seminal essay, "The Debasement of World Currency: It Is Inflation But Not as We Know It": 3) Western central banks won't be the ones to precipitate a short squeeze in gold, because they don't want their leased and swapped gold back from their bullion bank agents. Instead, controlling the gold price surreptitiously to defend the value of their currencies and government bonds is infinitely more important to them. Such premises may not quite have reached critical mass in the gold world, but if even the Financial Times is starting to acknowledge and credit GATA for them -- http://www.gata.org/node/12180 -- things may be changing fast enough that in a few years even the World Gold Council may have to pay as much attention to gold swaps, leases, and other mechanisms of central bank market intervention as to slinky high-fashion models, thereby achieving some relevance to the mining industry. Ackerman's essay is posted at GoldSeek here: http://news.goldseek.com/RickAckerman/1359558000.php And at 24hGold here: http://www.24hgold.com/english/news-gold-silver-why-isn-t-gold-higher-.a... CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer 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: California Resource Investment Conference * * * 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: Or a colorful poster of GATA's full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal on January 31, 2009: http://gata.org/node/wallstreetjournal Help keep GATA going GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at: To contribute to GATA, please visit: ADVERTISEMENT Opinion Around the World Is Changing 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 |
| Stock market correction ahead? – YouTube Posted: 30 Jan 2013 07:25 PM PST Check our website daily at... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit http://www.figanews.com for full Content ]]  |
| Posted: 30 Jan 2013 06:51 PM PST In just under 30 minutes, Peter Schiff and Doug Casey muse on many facets of the crumbling edifice of the status quo that is our current world. From Gold's relatively imminent rise to $5,000 and beyond, to investor ignorance of reality, Casey & Schiff swing from discussions of the US as political entity going forward to 'escape from America' plans for personal and wealth assets, and the realization that the biggest casualty (of US indebtedness), aside from individual liberty, is the value of the dollar - as taxing the middle class is unpopular with both parties - leaving only one route for the government - the inflation tax. Owning gold, silver, and foreign assets is preferred and while the rest of the world is also printing, the US is likely to beat them all. People "are clueless with respect to the true state of the global economy," with regard to inflation, fiat currencies, and specifically what will happen to the dollar. The conversation is wide-ranging and absolutely must-see as they remind market-watchers that "the whole thing is artificial," as you can't just keep printing money and monetizing debt without the dollar imploding with monetary policy descending (along with its trillion dollar coin) into 'Three Stooges' comedy. The conversation weaves to some endgame discussions which bring Peter to discuss his father, who he sees as a political prisoner, and his views on the future...
There is something here for everyone... |
| Elliott's Paul Singer On How Money Is Created... And How It Dies Posted: 30 Jan 2013 06:25 PM PST When we launched our series into the US Shadow Banking system in the summer of 2010 we had one simple objective: to demonstrate just how little the process of modern (and by modern we mean circa 2004 not 1981) money creation was understood. Here was just one example where some $17 trillion (back then, now less) in credit money was rapidly liquidating, an amount greater than the entire M2 and even M3 (had that series still be in circulation) and yet not one academic, pundit or self-professed money expert had or has still accounted for the massive impact of this monetary abstraction on the markets and the economy, which as most know "grows" (to use one of the most misunderstood words in all of economics) primarily by expansion (or contraction as the case may be) of credit, both traditional, which is Bernanke's domain, and "shadow", courtesy of America's #1 export: "financial innovation." It is now three years later and we are happy to report that almost not one person, not those that hide their complete lack of understanding of the money creation process behind big words, circular arguments, and three letter "monetary theory" acronyms, and certainly not those who set monetary policy, have understood a single thing of what we have been trying to explain all this time, which is merely the modern monetary reality but not from some textbook theoretical perspective, but from a purely practical, where money is nothing more than 1s and 0s in some server, standpoint. However, one person has. That one person is Paul Singer. Paul is not some fringe blogger, some academic with a chip on his shoulder and an inferiority complex, nor some lunatic gold bug. Paul runs Elliott Management, one of the five biggest hedge funds in the US, which at last check had some $21.1 billion under management. And having managed money successfully since 1977, and witnessed numerous cycles of growth and contraction, not to mention money creation and liquidation, we would argue that his opinion on virtually all matters finance and money-related is second to none. It is certainly orders of magnitude more relevant and correct than that of the shamanistic central planning hacks who sit down every month in Marriner Eccler building to form a circle of depraved (and arguably deferred genocidal) cluelessness, and after a theatrical vote a la Stalingrad circa 1954, determine the cost of money (at least they did in the Old Normal) without even understanding what money actually is. So for anyone who wishes to know what really happens in the modern world when money is created - and that would be most people who pretend to be informed on this, and other modern financial topics as nowadays it is all about money creation (and soon, destruction) here is, from Paul Singer's latest monthly letter, an extended discussion on the nature of money, how it is created, and most importantly, how it dies. Money Tsunami The concept of "money" used to be simple: items of recognized value, initially in the form of shells, livestock, and then precious metals. At some point, someone decided to print currency on paper, but it was widely understood that it had to be backed by something real, like gold or silver. That history is oversimplified, but it illustrates this central truth: Money that is created at will, rather than grown in the field, mined from the earth, or otherwise subject to supply limitations, can be easily degraded. Nobody would want to own something that may or may not have value and purchasing power in the future. What, then, determines the value of money? The worldview and ethics of those in charge of the printing presses are obvious answers that are often overlooked. Another is the confidence (or inertia!) of the people who hold and trade the money, or claims denominated in money. Fast forward to the modern era, which features central banks, so-called "fractional reserve banking," leverage, and derivatives. Central banks allowed commercial banks to create money by making loans while keeping small amounts of reserves on hand or at the central banks. As money market funds, bank CDs, and other like instruments were created and then became a sizeable portion of the global financial system, things got even more complicated. An obvious clue that the very definition of money, to say nothing of the appropriate ways to analyze and adjust monetary policy, have departed from the understanding and control of monetary authorities can be found in the proliferation over time of acronyms to describe what used to be called simply "the money supply": M1, M2, M2A, M3, MZM, and several others. Add modern derivatives, which entered the scene in a significant way only some 30 years ago, and the picture becomes even murkier. To demonstrate this, in slow motion, consider the creation of a credit default swap (CDS), and then a mortgage collateralized debt obligation (CDO). Assume an investor wants to be long the credit of IBM. The investor offers to sell to a dealer a CDS on IBM. The dealer purchases the CDS and either keeps it or lays off the risk by booking an offsetting transaction with someone else. Actual securities issued by IBM are not part of these transactions – the CDS is just a contract between the investor and the dealer. As IBM's credit quality is perceived to change, the price of the CDS will fluctuate and money will change hands between the investor and the dealer (based on the "mark to market"). This position is basically a borrowing by the investor who now "owns" a security referencing the credit of IBM, and who has put up only a small deposit – a tiny fraction of the notional credit exposure that the investor is long. It also represents a highly-leveraged loan by the dealer. Although the investor/borrower does not receive the full proceeds of this "loan," he or she bears the full risk of loss on the underlying asset. It is as if the investor borrowed money from the dealer, added a small amount of his or her own money, and purchased an IBM security with the total amount of money. Interestingly, such borrowings also have the effect of impacting the price of the actual underlying assets (in this case, IBM credit) due to arbitrage pressures. In effect, these transactions by investors and non-bank dealers represent many of the characteristics of the creation and dissipation of money, but they are outside the traditional and commonly-understood mechanics of fractional reserve banking. Most economists would not consider these transactions in the context of money supply, but we think that they are being mechanistic and not seeing the actual effects of the basically unlimited ability of private derivatives transactions to have many of the same effects as are caused by the creation and destruction of "money." The ecosystem of mortgage securitizations has similar characteristics. It starts with the tranching of pools of mortgages into mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and then the referencing (via derivatives) of low-rated tranches to form new securities called synthetic CDOs. Based upon fanciful assumptions about diversity that prevailed pre-2008, the bulk of synthetic CDOs that referenced low-rated mortgage-pool tranches magically turned into AAA-rated securities. These instruments, even in subprime mortgage securitizations, were consequently treated by regulators as zero-risk-rated. Until the music stopped, these high-rated securities had many of the powerful multiplier effects of money. Furthermore, the institutions that packaged and sold the MBS, and those that put together the synthetic CDOs, performed many of the functions of banks (conjuring credit out of small reserves) even if they weren't banks. Finally, the entire process caused demand for houses to increase and prices to rise. The purpose of this part of the discussion about money is to show that things have gotten really complex and subtle in the modern banking and derivatives era, and that the old model of money as being solely or mainly the product of bank reserves and bank loans is woefully inadequate. Now one more element should be added to this mix: quantitative easing, or QE. The government spends money on roads, bureaucrats' salaries, entitlements, etc. To pay for such spending, Treasury sells a security to the public, and it has an obligation to repay the purchaser when the security matures. The security might be a Treasury Bill, a 30-year bond, or anything in between. The Federal Reserve (or the Fed, as it is commonly known) has the ability to set short-term interest rates, which has incentive/disincentive effects on bank lending and consumer spending. In a nutshell, that model has prevailed as the status quo since the Fed was created in 1913, up until 2008. Since the crash of 2008, there has been an additional dynamic at work. Namely, the Fed is purchasing massive amounts of Treasury securities, either directly or on the open market. To be clear, the cash outlays by Treasury for government spending are the same as in the preceding paragraph. The difference is that post-crash, there are far fewer securities outstanding that the Treasury must pay off at maturity, because trillions of dollars of such securities are owned by another department of the federal government. We think this process is the effective equivalent of money-printing. For those who think otherwise, we pose the following question: If QE did not have the effect of printing money, why would the Fed do it? We do not think that QE is merely a duration swap. If the government simply wanted shorter duration and cheaper borrowing costs, the easy course would be for the Fed to set interest rates at zero and for the Treasury to issue only 30-day Treasury Bills to pay for government spending. One possible outcome of such an approach would be that the price of long-term bonds would be uncontrolled, and could possibly fall precipitously, thereby driving up long-term interest rates. Instead, the government adopted a zero interest rate policy, or ZIRP, and Treasury's borrowing rates dropped as the Fed purchased its bonds, elevating the prices of virtually all other securities. All of this contrivance is intended to be an indirect way of supporting economic activity, and perhaps it has done that to some degree. But it is causing massive distortions of risk-reward in stocks and bonds, as well as significant expansion of future risks of both inflation and severe losses in asset prices. These losses would be experienced by both the Fed and by investors. The Fed's explanations of these policies are delivered with equanimity and aplomb. However, in our view, the inventions of modern finance have "gotten away from them" and are not adequately understood by the money-printing overseers. A "smoking gun" is the complete failure of policymakers (and financial-institution executives) to predict or understand the circumstances surrounding the 2008 financial crisis – neither the inner workings/interconnectedness of the institutions involved nor the risks inherent in the system. Recently released minutes of Fed meetings in 2007 make it clear that they did not understand the modern financial system: its structure, the instruments that comprised it, the implications of the leverage and risk-taking afforded by untested derivative products, and the vulnerability and opacity of the major financial institutions. It does not mean that the Fed has no credibility when it acts or makes pronouncements today. But it certainly means that they should not have a great deal of presumptive credibility, especially about elements that are experimental and untested or that they got so wrong recently (like QE, and the risks of a system comprised of modern highly-leveraged financial institutions laden with derivatives positions, respectively). It is critically important for investors to try to understand what global QE is actually doing, where it may lead, and what will happen when it slows, stops or shifts into reverse. What we urge most strongly is that the current atmosphere of calm and stability, and the lack of virulent inflation, must not be relied upon to continue forever. There are certain words and phrases in official communications that give some hint of the uncertainty that exists about key elements of central-bank policies: confidence, anchored inflationary expectations, and velocity are prime examples. Our takeaway is that when investors lose confidence in ZIRP-soaked, QE-ridden, faith-based paper money, the consequences could be abrupt and catastrophic to societal stability. We do not know exactly what to do about it, except to urge policymakers to STOP substituting QE for sound tax, regulatory, labor, environmental, and fiscal policies. Due to the combination of the lagged nature of inflation in wages and consumer prices, the vital (if possibly more ephemeral than policymakers think) role of "confidence," and the fact that each particular brand of paper money is competing with other currencies that are similarly mismanaged, the world is in a position today in which the major central banks see only the beneficial effects of QE and not the risks. Bonds that otherwise might be collapsing and repudiated are at sky-high prices with stingy yields. Reported consumer inflation is near historic lows. Consequently, central bankers think that what they got away with yesterday will also work today and next week. Investors either have not figured out that they are long seriously overpriced promises or think that they will all have the luck and perspicacity to reject such instruments before they plunge in price. The reason we combined derivatives and QE in this discussion is that both are proud inventions of modern financial science, both have many of the characteristics of money-creation, and both are undertaken without any real understanding by public or private sector leaders of their nature, power, interconnectivity, and ultimate consequences. QE is exceptionally dangerous and way past its tipping point. We do not believe it can be unwound without serious consequences. Central bankers think (hope?) that it can be easily unwound at some future date, but they may not be right. When the rejection of long-term bonds and paper money starts at some unpredictable future time, it may be fast and difficult to contain or reverse. History is replete with examples of societies whose downfalls were related to or caused by the destruction of money. The end of this phase of global financial history will likely erupt suddenly. It will take almost everyone by surprise, and then it may grind a great deal of capital and societal cohesion into dust and pain. We wish more global leaders understood the value of sound economic policy, the necessity of sound money, and the difference between governmental actions that enable growth and economic stability and those that risk abject ruin. Unfortunately, it appears that few leaders do. |
| What the Fed’s Announcement Means for Gold – YouTube Posted: 30 Jan 2013 05:27 PM PST Check our website daily at... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit http://www.figanews.com for full Content ]]  |
| The Silver and Gold Price Jumped Higher on News of Further Inflation Gold Up $19.10 at $1,679.90 Posted: 30 Jan 2013 05:18 PM PST Gold Price Close Today : 1679.90 Change : 19.10 or 1.15% Silver Price Close Today : 32.152 Change : 0.993 or 3.19% Gold Silver Ratio Today : 52.249 Change : -1.052 or -1.97% Silver Gold Ratio Today : 0.01914 Change : 0.000378 or 2.01% Platinum Price Close Today : 1687.80 Change : 10.40 or 0.62% Palladium Price Close Today : 751.00 Change : 1.65 or 0.22% S&P 500 : 1,501.03 Change : -6.80 or -0.45% Dow In GOLD$ : $171.10 Change : $ 7.50 or 4.58% Dow in GOLD oz : 8.277 Change : 0.363 or 4.58% Dow in SILVER oz : 432.47 Change : -15.38 or -3.43% Dow Industrial : 13,904.73 Change : -49.69 or -0.36% US Dollar Index : 79.26 Change : -31.400 or -28.38% The GOLD PRICE added $19.10 today to close Comex at $1,679.90, Silver rose 99.3 cents to 3215.2c. In the last two days silver has risen 139.6c (4.5%) and the GOLD PRICE $27 (1.6%). What jumps out at us today is the SILVER PRICE closing above its 50 day moving average (3189c). Either telepaths are working in the silver market, or news of the FOMC's announcement leaked out. Silver gapped up on the open, traded straight up, then gapped up again, and crossed 32 resistance and the 50 DMA in the bargain. What's important about the 50 DMA? Because it has capped every move since mid-October. Only barrier left before silver is the downtrend line from the October 2012 high, tomorrow about 3245c. Last high was 3249c, so any close over 3250c tomorrow will send silver shooting for 3450c, next resistance. I can't see what will stop it, but then, I not a telepath or clairvoyant. Gold's story is a wee bit more complicated. It didn't quite best its 50 DMA (1688.44), but shot through its 20 DMA and punched into the 150 DMA (1,681.13). One tee tiny jump tomorrow takes it through the 50 DMA, but a much bigger test faces gold: bursting through $1,700. Exactly at that resistance tomorrow awaits the downtrend line from the October 2012 high. Breaking through now will boost gold to challenge $1,725. Every move you THINK is a breakout needs to confirm by moving further in the same direction the next day. Still, both silver and gold have built an uptrend -- higher highs and higher lows -- since 4 January. Look for higher silver and gold prices tomorrow. Again I will say, I believe silver and gold made their post-October correction low on 4 January 2013. From here both should launch a rally that will carry gold to $2,350, maybe by end-May, that will mark only the first leg of a much longer rally. I have to warn y'all to be careful of "We Buy Gold and Silver Shops." Today I had a customer who wanted to sell US 90%. He called one of these shops, and they offered him $14.8 times face value for what I bought for $22.802 times face value. Y'all have to check around for pricing. Some of these folks would steal the quarters off a dead man's eyes. Yea, the Fed hath spoken, and 'tis naught but vexation, vanity, and hot air. His Munificence Ben said he will keep on buying $85 billion in securities ever month, because of "bad weather." Nay, I joke not. The FOMC blamed the "temporary pause" in the economy (temporary since 2008) on "temporary forces," like bad weather. I couldn't make up stuff this silly if I stayed up late nights. His Munificence said he is not backing off his inflation, so gold and silver surged higher. So did the 10 year Treasury yield. It rose a huge 0.91% to 2.006%, punching through resistance at the upper channel line. If it clears 2.4%, many more folks will begin to wonder why they are holding a losing position in US treasuries. Of that $85 billion His Munificence plans to spend monthly monthly, he will spend $45 billion on Treasuries and another $40 bn on Mortgage Backed Securities. In other words, he's bailing out the banks still. He's making the Fed the septic tank for their sewage-grade assets. HMB also said he would keep on spending $85 bn a month if the outlook for the labor market does not improve substantially. The Keynesian stupidity motivating HMB is like your mechanic claiming he aims to fix your automobile by taking off all four wheels, dropping the transmission, dousing it with gasoline, and throwing in a match. This will do the same for the economy. Stocks did not like His Munificence's plans, and dropped. Dow lost 49.69 (0.38%) to 13,904.73. S&P lost 6.8 (0.45%) to 1,501.03. Since I am only a natural born fool from Tennessee, I don't claim to know much. But I have observed that tops in the stock market are just about impossible to pinpoint, even as you watch them. 'Tis an enormous market, and just about the time you are certain it's been beat, it raises its head for one last spike up. Therefore, I am not pinpointing or predicting, only pointing out the witnesses for the prosecution First, the Dow and the S&P500 both have pricked their overhead resistance (top jaw of the Jaws of Death), and both have peeked through the top of a fatal rising wedge. Both are in the right shoulder of a 16-year old head and shoulders. Both have traced out a broadening top ("Jaws of Death") since May 2011, and within that have formed another head and shoulders through 2012. Call the other witnesses. The Dow in Gold gapped up four days ago, formed an island reversal, and if it gaps down again tomorrow will complete the formation. In the same time silver gapped up, gapped again to a single day top (452.10 oz), gapped down yesterday and again today, leaving that top isolated in what also partakes of Island Reversal flavor. Wait! Call those other two witnesses, the RSI and MACD that both point out a severely overbought Dow and S&P500. But shucks -- all those witnesses may be lying. Ben's generosity to the banks didn't help the US dollar index much. It fell , losing 31.4 basis points (0.4%) to end at 79.255. This confirms its breakdown from its short term uptrend yesterday. Euro gapped up on that news, way over $1.3500 resistance, up 0.56% to $1.3565. That answers what it intends to do: rise. Yep, the yen made another new low for the move today, closing down 0.4% at 109.84 cents/Y100. US$1=Y91.04=E0.7372=0.031102 oz Ag=0.000595 oz Au. 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 © 2013, 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.  |
| Printing Money Laid Bare: The "Goldbugs" Reply Posted: 30 Jan 2013 04:56 PM PST Bullion Vault |
| Marc Faber Warns Gold & Silver investors of Economic Collapse 2013 – YouTube Posted: 30 Jan 2013 04:49 PM PST Check our website daily at... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit http://www.figanews.com for full Content ]]  |
| Posted: 30 Jan 2013 04:33 PM PST The whole distressing thing is a big stink about nothing. It started because of The Economist magazine, which unfortunately tends towards that whole ridiculous Keynesian crapola, but which nevertheless, and, I might add, quite paradoxically, had a very interesting article buried on page 75 titled "New Model army," with the subheads "Economics after the crisis" and "Efforts are under way to improve macroeconomic models." First off, I immediately involuntarily laughed the famous Mogambo Laughter of Scorn And Contempt (MLOSAC) at this stupidity of "improving macroeconomic models," my voice dripping with undisguised scorn and contempt, as is implied in the title, which was, in case you forgot, Mogambo Laughter of Scorn And Contempt (MLOSAC). Continuing with this seemingly pointless narrative, I laughed and laughed and laughed beyond the point where I was still actually amused at the idea of the government allowing changing the Keynesian strangle-hold on the economy, until I was finally reduced to loudly dyspeptic chortling, and with an additional angry, sarcastic, altogether snotty tone to my voice, going "Guffaw, guffaw, guffaw!" This guffawing, for some reason, was upsetting to everyone at the office, and they were saying hurtful things like "Shut up! I'm on the phone here!" and even my own boss was yelling "Die, you Irritating Mogambo Bastard (IMB)!" Apparently (and this is the crux of the matter) there are threats of lawsuits over alleged flecks of flying spittle, referred to by the Plaintiffs as Icky Mogambo Cooties (IMC), all according to entirely baseless allegations where evidence is sketchy -- at best! -- beyond the dozen eye-witnesses and those pesky video recordings which have CLEARLY been altered, by a person or persons unknown, to discredit me. I cannot wait to argue my case in court, where my razor-like, legal-eagle razzle-dazzle will skewer the flimsy case of the whiny Plaintiffs, and expose them for the ridiculous, libelous and litigious morons that they are, which I will easily prove by dragging them to the witness stand, by the hair if necessary or if opportunity arises, and asking each of them, under oath, "Have you been smart enough to have been buying gold and silver bullion as part of your investment strategy to protect yourself against the terrifying, ruinous inflation in prices that will inevitably result from the insane levels of inflation in the money supply created by the Federal Reserve so as to feed the gulping, all-devouring gullet of the enormous, bloated, twisted, sick federal government?" They will, of course, all tearfully admit under the relentless pummeling of my pointed questioning that no, they did not buy gold and silver bullion, and they are ashamed. As an aside, this is to be expected because they are members of "the majority of people," and there is an Iron Law Of Investing (ILOI), as in "inescapable mathematical imperative," that dictates that the majority of investors MUST be wrong most of the time, making them sure losers over the long term. Otherwise, you would have the mathematical near-impossibility of a small minority of investors losing enough money most of the time to make winners of the vast majority of investors over the long term! Think about it and say "Whoa! Ain't nobody that stupid!" Pounding home the point, I would angrily bang my fist against the table, and ask the terrified witnesses "If the majority of investors were actually right, from where could their profits come, except from the small minority of investors who, boggling the mind, were monumentally wrong most of the time over the long haul? And to also pay the enormous fees, charges, and expenses of the legions of middlemen and the relentless taxes of a ravenous government? Huh? Where? From where do you think the money could possibly come? Answer me, puny Earthling! Resistance is futile!" At about this time in my brilliant legal defense, the way I figure it, is when the judge is screaming for the Bailiff to haul me away and put me in jail where I never again get to eat delicious beef tacos, with their crunchy corn tortillas proving the perfect wrapping for a full layer of crisp, cool lettuce and delicious sour cream, plus a sweet salsa, whereupon I will wake up in a cold sweat, and then realize with a note of relief that I was dreaming the whole time, I am not really a lawyer, and the only things I know about law are from watching old episodes of Perry Mason on TV ("Objection, your Honor! This testimony is incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial!" "Objection sustained!" says the judge). Anyway, the reason for my laughing so uproariously in the first place is that any "improvement" in the current Keynesian econometric stupidities will only be "allowed" if the "New! Improved!" models show a gnawing need for even MORE insane creations of money and credit, and a bigger and bigger government to regulate more people and businesses, and an even bigger and bigger government to help more and more people! Hahahaha! Look! I'm laughing again! Hahahaha! The Economist magazine blithely ignores my cruel taunting and disrespectful jibes, and continues merrily along, as if I don't even exist, gliding over the fact that Keynesianism is a complete, total failure, and merely noting that it is a real dud because it does not reflect "the financial system accurately, nor allow for the booms and busts observed in the real world." The big problem is that the whole basis of Keynesian theory rests on the idea that economies and economic actors seek equilibrium, when any idiot knows that systems inexorably tend towards disequilibrium and chaos, as in obeying the laws of entropy, and it takes energy to keep that collapse from happening, which is, of course, the opportunity for successful capitalism. The first job of these patch-'em and fix-'em guys is to, surprisingly then, "put banks into the models"! Hahaha! I thought they were already in there! Who knew, huh? Hahaha! The reason, The Economist magazine explains, that banks are NOT already in the stupid neo-Keynesian econometric models is because "macroeconomists thought of them as a simple 'veil' between savers and borrowers, rather than profit-seeking firms that make loans opportunistically and may themselves affect the economy." They did? Where have they been for the couple of last decades? Hahaha! Dorks! And because I desperately want to know, exactly how DOES one mathematically describe the variable functions of banks making loans variously opportunistically, and variously in response to new and various governmental regulations and/or tax law, variously affecting the economy, especially when the foul Federal Reserve (a bank!) is permanently at the heart of it, purposely creating variously monstrous amounts of excess money and credit to satisfy the always-insatiable, gluttonous, ravenous appetite of the federal government for deficit-spending nigh unto bankruptcy and inflationary economic collapse? Thus we learn that, if life was fair, this is where The Economist magazine would have put in a quote from me, perhaps along the lines of "The Marvelous And Wonderful Mogambo (TMAWM) is quoted as saying 'People who believe this preposterous neo-Keynesian econometric crap are morons, and I say this without fear of contradiction because it is blatantly obvious that it is not remotely possible to create such a monstrous huge clot of equations and their bastard derived-and-substituted offspring -- with the laughable precision of three decimal places, for crying out loud! -- about something as grossly inexact as human behavior that didn't have so incredibly much error built into every tiny piece of it that any real information -- if any! -- is immediately drowned out by the deafening statistical noise in such a bizarre, error-multiplying, iterative system, especially one that is That Freaking Big (TFB).'" On the other hand, one can dispense with the dismal failure of all of that silly Keynesian hocus-pocus, and the expensive computers needed to run it, by just making the dollar be gold so that the money supply is fixed, let the government die and take its onerous, crippling tonnage of regulatory burden to hell with it, let the free market and sound money take care of business, and everything will be fine, to which I say "Hahahaha!" and let go with a hearty guffaw or two if you think that the government is going to allow that! Hahaha! Guffaw! Guffaw! Since that is NOT going to happen by a long shot, to protect oneself from the coming financial disaster, one need merely do the One Smart Thing (OST), which is to buy gold and silver bullion, as is proved by thousands of years of history, replete as it is with governments containing the selfsame traitorous treacheries as the horrid Nancy Pelosi ("Let's all hurry up and vote for the Obamacare bill so that we can find out what's it!"), which is the horrifying history of governments and peoples doing these same, sad, silly, suicidal stupidities that have now killed us today, as in "We're Freaking Doomed (WFD)." And with One Smart Thing (OST) having a fabulous 100% successful track record like that, how can one NOT buy gold and silver bullion, and oil stocks, too, and then chortle with a gleeful, gloating self-satisfaction while doing so? The while the use of the phrase "Whee! This investing stuff is easy!" whilst doing so is, of course, entirely optional, you take it from me, and from Junior Mogambo Rangers (JMRs) around the world and in this whole quadrant of the galaxy, that it feels so wonderfully good, to finally be a guaranteed winner for a change, that the words just seem to come tumbling out. Whee, indeed! Whee!  |
| U.S. Economy Contracts, Dollar Falls, Commodities Rise. By Gregory Mannarino – YouTube Posted: 30 Jan 2013 04:27 PM PST Check our website daily at... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit http://www.figanews.com for full Content ]]  |
| Ken "Ain't Different" Rogoff Crushes The Infinite Dream Of Crude Keynesian Stimulus Posted: 30 Jan 2013 04:25 PM PST Following today's dismal GDP print, the massive ongoing borrowing being undertaken by our government, and the Bernankian policies which appear inescapable (and entirely ineffective for anything but the market), we thought Ken Rogoff's recent op-ed from the FT was extremely appropriate. Authored by Ken Rogoff, originally posted at The FT, Many foreign observers look at the US budget shenanigans with confusion and dismay, wondering how a country that seems to have it all can manage its fiscal affairs so chaotically. The root problem is not just a hugely elevated level of public debt, or a patently unsustainable trajectory for old age entitlements. It is an electorate deeply divided over the direction of government, with differences compounded by changing demographics and sustained sluggish growth. It is hard to escape the notion that today's budget battles are but a skirmish in a much longer-term war that won't be settled soon. America must shortly answer a series of fundamental questions. For example, as its share of global gross domestic product shrinks from about 20 per cent today to as little as 10 per cent in five decades, should it try to continue to play the role of global policeman? The US spends more than 4 per cent of GDP a year on defence, roughly twice the global average. The Obama administration's fiscal plans anticipate a peace dividend after withdrawals from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Republican party has reasonably argued that it is unrealistic to expect this quiet to last. At the very least, if military expenditures continue to fall, it becomes more important to have the fiscal capacity to ramp them up in response to new threats. It is also worth noting that if the US were ever forced to surrender the mantle of world policeman to, say, China, foreigners may no longer have quite the same desire for its debt. Another huge area of disagreement surrounds the question of what services should be provided by the federal government versus the states or the private sector. There is a lot of "low-hanging fruit" here. Productivity improvements in government services have been glacial compared with many other sectors of the economy. A visit to a primary school classroom in many US cities is the closest thing one can get to time travel. One idea that economists have been enamoured with for years is school vouchers but there is strong resistance from entrenched interests. How long will these same interests forestall online classes and computer-graded feedback, initially as a supplement for traditional education structures but eventually as a significant substitute. The fiscal implications are huge, as are the disagreements. In contrast, infrastructure should be a place of common ground but again there is paralysis. Aside from funding priorities, there is a wide chasm between those who see union domination of infrastructure as key to ensuring high-paying jobs versus those who want infrastructure built, but at reasonable rates. There is the joke about the visiting Chinese group that asks their New York tour guide how long it will take to finish the Second Avenue subway. On being told two years, the Chinese translator hesitates before conveying the response and asks: "Wait a second, you mean two weeks, right?" One of the US's greatest assets is its ability to expand immigration without running into land or resource constraints anytime soon. But US immigration policy has long been dominated by emotion, not the cold-blooded, rational economic calculus many other countries apply. There are rigid visa restrictions aimed at keeping out terrorists, some of which remain incredibly counterproductive. Immigration policy has large implications for US debt and the sustainability of entitlements for the indigent population, yet the link seldom receives serious attention. And of course, healthcare is the mother of all fiscal challenges, as costs rise and the population ages. The idea that one should just ignore all these problems and apply crude Keynesian stimulus is a dangerous one. It matters a great deal how the government taxes and spends, not just how much. The US debt level is a constraint. A growing number of empirical studies, including my own joint work with Carmen Reinhart, suggest that the US has already reached a debt level that has been associated with slower growth in advanced countries. The fact interest rates are low today does not necessarily mean the US is an exception to this rule – take one look at stagnant Japan's rates. The dollar's reserve currency status buys America more room, but how much and for how long? A high debt burden is a problem precisely because it reduces a country's capacity to deal with future shocks. The US remains an incredible franchise with many remarkable strengths. The world's overwhelming presumption is that Americans will find a path to budget sustainability. Nevertheless, it is hard for many in the US to escape the nagging feeling that just maybe this time we won't. With more than $5tn of US Treasury debt, and memories of the huge inflation of the 1970s and default on gold clauses in the 1930s, foreigners would be right to worry a little. |
| BlackBerry Exec On BlackBerry 10 – YouTube Posted: 30 Jan 2013 04:20 PM PST Check our website daily at... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit http://www.figanews.com for full Content ]]  |
| US economy shrinks for first time since 2009 – YouTube Posted: 30 Jan 2013 04:11 PM PST Check our website daily at... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit http://www.figanews.com for full Content ]]  |
| Guest Post: The New Regime For Precious Metals Posted: 30 Jan 2013 03:43 PM PST Today we look at long term charts of some key commodities and investigate means by which we might gain insight into the dynamics of their price movements. The methods are from a tool-set I have used for studying climate, much of which has been presented previously. The key problem is interpreting the dynamics of a complex system from empirical observations. These observations are in the form of measurements of some parameter, like temperature, salinity (in ocean climate studies), or price. For our purposes we will consider month-end prices of gold, silver, copper, and rough rice (CBOT contract) from January 1996 to December 2012. The copper chart appears below. 
The charts are most commonly studied as a plot of price vs time. There are many articles written on the statistical methods used. Is it a cup with handle? What about that wedge at the end there? Many newsletter authors have made (or have attempted to make) a business of selling their special methods. For a limited time only*, The World Complex offers its techniques for free. At your own risk, of course. The dynamical evolution of a complex system is described by a succession of states through which the system has evolved. We have no way of perceiving the actual state of a complex system at any given time, but we may create a "reconstructed state" from empirical observations. Ergodic theory tells us that the succession of reconstructed states will be topologically similar to the succession of actual states, so that studying the "reconstructed state space" will enable us make inferences about the dynamics of the complex system under observation. Reconstructed states can be most easily created from multiple time series (outputs) from the system, if present, by simply presenting a scatter-plot of the corresponding observations from the different time series. They can also be constructed from a single time series, an example of which we will see next time. Rather than drawing a best-fit line through the states, we connect them by drawing a curve through them in sequence. This curve is described as the trajectory of the system, and can be said to represent the system's evolution through time. The state is reconstructed in n dimensions by n observations, where n (the embedding dimension) is ideally chosen so that there are no crossings. Usually n > 3, which is a little difficult to display. Consequently, I normally use n = 2, which is less than ideal, but still useful. Example 1: Gold/copper vs Silver/rough rice (gold and silver as $/oz, Cu in $/lb, rice in $ per hundred-weight) 
This is a plot we have looked at before. The trajectory of the system is complex and fine details are difficult to describe, but overall, the system has largely been confined to the yellow ellipse left of centre, with the exception of three periods: 1) the run-up in copper and silver prices starting in 2006; 2) the commodity collapse in late 2008, when gold held up better than the other commodities in this chart; and 3) the excursion of the past 3 years, which either started in March 2010 (orange arrow on the right at the break-out of the ellipse) or in mid 2009 (left orange arrow at the beginning of the trend). Given its size and duration, we give greater significance to the latest excursion. But what is the nature of the excursion? Did rice collapse? Or silver rise? Silver has been rising since 2002. Then came a rapid advance up until early 2011, which I'm sure we all remember. Same commodities--different order. 
Not too different (although in this one I had rice in cents per hundredweight). Most of the past seventeen years has been spent confined to the portion of state space within the ellipse, with the exception of the three times noted in the first example, and Buffet's purchase of silver in 1998. None of the excursions had lasting power except for the current one, which broke out of the ellipse in early 2010. Again--did rice collapse? Or did gold suddenly accelerate in 2010? Recombining the ratios one more time . . . 
Here we see the famous "rabbit sitting in a stroller" formation, which means . . . well, you'll have to subscribe to find out. The main difference between this graph and the others is that there is no recent excursion of any length. The reason is that the excursion is the separation of the precious metals (which still includes silver) from the industrial metals and agricultural commodities. Even though gold and silver have been in a bull market for over ten years, the real regime change only happened about three years ago. What happened? This. 
Data sourced from World Gold Council. Central Banks were net sellers of gold until early 2009. That big spike is misleading, as it corresponds to China's announcement that it had purchased 454 tonnes over the preceding six years (note that China has not reported any gold purchases since that time). At that point the race was on for Central Banks to buy gold. I believe it is the Central Bank purchases of gold that have created the new regime we observe in the Au/Cu vs Ag/rice state space. * until the powers of darkness control the internet |
| January US Gold & Silver Eagle Sales Into Perspective Posted: 30 Jan 2013 03:38 PM PST The sales of US Silver Eagles, as reported by the US Mint, have skyrocketed in the month of January. The chart below shows the monthly sales figures since 2008. Truly, the spike is exceptional for silver, but there is a significant difference with the Gold coin sales. The question is obviously why silver sales have gone up exceptionally compared to gold coins. We do not pretend to have the answer, and we will avoid any guess. We believe that the public awareness about the destruction of the currency and the real benefits of precious metals is rising steadily. Instead of looking for other explanations, we would like to put these figures into perspective, in order to add some value to this news event. Detailed sales figures were reported by the Mint on January 29th, the one but last trading day of the month of January:
Now to put these figures into perspective, we have collected some recent data from earlier articles on Gold Silver Worlds:
It is also interesting to compare these figures with total central bank gold holdings. Suppose the January gold coin sales would remain steady throughout the whole year (just an assumption), then the total sales would equal 45 tonnes. We asked for opinions from people in the field. Claudio Grass, managing director at Global Gold in Switzerland told us the following:
An intuitive reaction of most people is to link these sales spikes with higher prices. While it could be that higher coin sales figure result in higher prices, it is not necessarily the case. Why? The most important characteristic of precious metals, compared with all other commodities, is that almost all stock is above the ground. The additional yearly mined supply is some 1 to 1.5% of the existing stock. So almost all precious metals sales imply a shift from one holder to another one. Robert Blumen, precious metals analyst and one of the contributors of this website wrote the following about the latest US Mint sales:
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| Richard Russell - Silver Interesting, Massive Short Position Posted: 30 Jan 2013 03:13 PM PST  With gold on the move and silver surging above $32, the Godfather of newsletter writers, Richard Russell, covered stocks and informed his subscribers that silver looks very interesting to him because of the massive short position. Here is what Russell had to say: "As of yesterday, the Dow has been up 12 out of 14 sessions. The market is either close to exhaustion or the short sellers are near panic. The shorts must be thinking at this point that this market is never going to go down. With that brand of thinking, the shorts must be near panic."This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Doug Casey's Current View of the World Posted: 30 Jan 2013 03:00 PM PST Doug Casey's latest book, Totally Incorrect, gathers his iconoclastic views in a tidy package to stimulate and possibly dismay readers. In an interview with The Gold Report, Doug elaborates on some of his most radical ideas and offers ... Read More...  |
| Posted: 30 Jan 2013 02:48 PM PST Who Runs The World? Solid Proof That A Core Group Of Wealthy Elitists Is Pulling The Strings Who Runs The World? Solid Proof That A Core Group Of Wealthy Elitists Are Pulling The Strings. Does a shadowy group of obscenely wealthy elitists control the world? Do men and women with enormous amounts of money really run the world from behind the scenes? The answer might surprise you. Most of us tend to think of money as a convenient way to conduct transactions, but the truth is that it also represents power and control. And today we live in a neo-fuedalist system in which the super rich pull all the strings. When I am talking about the ultra-wealthy, I am not just talking about people that have a few million dollars. As you will see later in this article, the ultra-wealthy have enough money sitting in offshore banks to buy all of the goods and services produced in the United States during the course of an entire year and still be able to pay off the entire U.S. national debt. That is an amount of money so large that it is almost incomprehensible. Under this neo-feudalist system, all the rest of us are debt slaves, including our own governments. Just look around – everyone is drowning in debt, and all of that debt is making the ultra-wealthy even wealthier. But the ultra-wealthy don't just sit on all of that wealth. They use some of it to dominate the affairs of the nations. The ultra-wealthy own virtually every major bank and every major corporation on the planet. They use a vast network of secret societies, think tanks and charitable organizations to advance their agendas and to keep their members in line. They control how we view the world through their ownership of the media and their dominance over our education system. They fund the campaigns of most of our politicians and they exert a tremendous amount of influence over international organizations such as the United Nations, the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO. When you step back and take a look at the big picture, there is little doubt about who runs the world. It is just that most people don't want to admit the truth. The ultra-wealthy don't run down and put their money in the local bank like you and I do. Instead, they tend to stash their assets in places where they won't be taxed such as the Cayman Islands. According to a report that was released last summer, the global elite have up to $32 TRILLION dollars stashed in offshore banks around the globe. U.S. GDP for 2011 was about 15 trillion dollars, and the U.S. national debt is sitting at about 16 trillion dollars, so you could add them both together and you still wouldn't hit 32 trillion dollars. And of course that does not even count the money that is stashed in other locations that the study did not account for, and it does not count all of the wealth that the global elite have in hard assets such as real estate, precious metals, art, yachts, etc. The global elite have really hoarded an incredible amount of wealth in these troubled times. The following is from an article on the Huffington Post website… Rich individuals and their families have as much as $32 trillion of hidden financial assets in offshore tax havens, representing up to $280 billion in lost income tax revenues, according to research published on Sunday. The study estimating the extent of global private financial wealth held in offshore accounts – excluding non-financial assets such as real estate, gold, yachts and racehorses – puts the sum at between $21 and $32 trillion. The research was carried out for pressure group Tax Justice Network, which campaigns against tax havens, by James Henry, former chief economist at consultants McKinsey & Co. He used data from the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, United Nations and central banks. But as I mentioned previously, the global elite just don't have a lot of money. They also basically own just about every major bank and every major corporation on the entire planet. According to an outstanding NewScientist article, a study of more than 40,000 transnational corporations conducted by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich discovered that a very small core group of huge banks and giant predator corporations dominate the entire global economic system… An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy. The researchers found that this core group consists of just 147 very tightly knit companies… When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a "super-entity" of 147 even more tightly knit companies – all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity – that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. "In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network," says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group. The following are the top 25 banks and corporations at the heart of this "super-entity". You will recognize many of the names on the list… 1. Barclays plc The ultra-wealthy elite often hide behind layers and layers of ownership, but the truth is that thanks to interlocking corporate relationships, the elites basically control almost every Fortune 500 corporation. The amount of power and control that this gives them is hard to describe. Unfortunately, this same group of people have been running things for a very long time. For example, New York City Mayor John F. Hylan said the following during a speech all the way back in 1922… The real menace of our Republic is the invisible government, which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy legs over our cities, states and nation. To depart from mere generalizations, let me say that at the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller-Standard Oil interests and a small group of powerful banking houses generally referred to as the international bankers. The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both parties, write political platforms, make catspaws of party leaders, use the leading men of private organizations, and resort to every device to place in nomination for high public office only such candidates as will be amenable to the dictates of corrupt big business. These international bankers and Rockefeller-Standard Oil interests control the majority of the newspapers and magazines in this country. They use the columns of these papers to club into submission or drive out of office public officials who refuse to do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the invisible government. It operates under cover of a self-created screen [and] seizes our executive officers, legislative bodies, schools, courts, newspapers and every agency created for the public protection. These international bankers created the central banks of the world (including the Federal Reserve), and they use those central banks to get the governments of the world ensnared in endless cycles of debt from which there is no escape. Government debt is a way to "legitimately" take money from all of us, transfer it to the government, and then transfer it into the pockets of the ultra-wealthy. Today, Barack Obama and almost all members of Congress absolutely refuse to criticize the Fed, but in the past there have been some brave members of Congress that have been willing to take a stand. For example, the following quote is from a speech that Congressman Louis T. McFadden delivered to the U.S. House of Representatives on June 10, 1932… Mr. Chairman, we have in this country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks. The Federal Reserve Board, a Government board, has cheated the Government of the United States and the people of the United States out of enough money to pay the national debt. The depredations and iniquities of the Federal Reserve Board has cost this country enough money to pay the national debt several times over. This evil institution has impoverished and ruined the people of the United States, has bankrupted itself, and has practically bankrupted our Government. It has done this through the defects of the law under which it operates, through the maladministration of that law by the Federal Reserve Board, and through the corrupt practices of the moneyed vultures who control it. Sadly, most Americans still believe that the Federal Reserve is a "federal agency", but that is simply not correct. The following comes from factcheck.org… The stockholders in the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks are the privately owned banks that fall under the Federal Reserve System. These include all national banks (chartered by the federal government) and those state-chartered banks that wish to join and meet certain requirements. About 38 percent of the nation's more than 8,000 banks are members of the system, and thus own the Fed banks. According to researchers that have looked into the ownership of the big Wall Street banks that dominate the Fed, the same names keep coming up over and over: the Rockefellers, the Rothschilds, the Warburgs, the Lazards, the Schiffs and the royal families of Europe. But ultra-wealthy international bankers have not just done this kind of thing in the United States. Their goal was to create a global financial system that they would dominate and control. Just check out what Georgetown University history professor Carroll Quigley once wrote… [T]he powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basle, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Sadly, most Americans have never even heard of the Bank for International Settlements, but it is at the very heart of the global financial system. The following is from Wikipedia… As an organization of central banks, the BIS seeks to make monetary policy more predictable and transparent among its 58 member central banks. While monetary policy is determined by each sovereign nation, it is subject to central and private banking scrutiny and potentially to speculation that affects foreign exchange rates and especially the fate of export economies. Failures to keep monetary policy in line with reality and make monetary reforms in time, preferably as a simultaneous policy among all 58 member banks and also involving the International Monetary Fund, have historically led to losses in the billions as banks try to maintain a policy using open market methods that have proven to be based on unrealistic assumptions. The ultra-wealthy have also played a major role in establishing other important international institutions such as the United Nations, the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO. In fact, the land for the United Nations headquarters in New York City was purchased and donated by John D. Rockefeller. The international bankers are "internationalists" and they are very proud of that fact. The elite also dominate the education system in the United States. Over the years, the Rockefeller Foundation and other elitist organizations have poured massive amounts of money into Ivy League schools. Today, Ivy League schools are considered to be the standard against which all other colleges and universities in America are measured, and the last four U.S. presidents were educated at Ivy League schools. The elite also exert a tremendous amount of influence through various secret societies (Skull and Bones, the Freemasons, etc.), through some very powerful think tanks and social clubs (the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group, the Bohemian Grove, Chatham House, etc.), and through a vast network of charities and non-governmental organizations (the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the World Wildlife Fund, etc.). But for a moment, I want to focus on the power the elite have over the media. In a previous article, I detailed how just six monolithic corporate giants control most of what we watch, hear and read every single day. These giant corporations own television networks, cable channels, movie studios, newspapers, magazines, publishing houses, music labels and even many of our favorite websites. Considering the fact that the average American watches 153 hours of television a month, the influence of these six giant corporations should not be underestimated. The following are just some of the media companies that these corporate giants own… Home Box Office (HBO) Walt Disney ABC Television Network Viacom Paramount Pictures News Corporation Dow Jones & Company, Inc. CBS Corporation CBS News NBC Universal Bravo And of course the elite own most of our politicians as well. The following is a quote from journalist Lewis Lapham… "The shaping of the will of Congress and the choosing of the American president has become a privilege reserved to the country's equestrian classes, a.k.a. the 20% of the population that holds 93% of the wealth, the happy few who run the corporations and the banks, own and operate the news and entertainment media, compose the laws and govern the universities, control the philanthropic foundations, the policy institutes, the casinos, and the sports arenas." Well, it is because both parties are owned by the establishment. It would be nice to think that the American people are in control of who runs things in the U.S., but that is not how it works in the real world. In the real world, the politician that raises more money wins more than 80 percent of the time in national races. Our politicians are not stupid – they are going to be very good to the people that can give them the giant piles of money that they need for their campaigns. And the people that can do that are the ultra-wealthy and the giant corporations that the ultra-wealthy control. Are you starting to get the picture? There is a reason why the ultra-wealthy are referred to as "the establishment". They have set up a system that greatly benefits them and that allows them to pull the strings. So who runs the world? They do. In fact, they even admit as much. David Rockefeller wrote the following in his 2003 book entitled "Memoirs"… "For more than a century, ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents such as my encounter with Castro to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure — one world, if you will. If that is the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it." There is so much more that could be said about all of this. In fact, an entire library of books could be written about the power and the influence of the ultra-wealthy international bankers that run the world. http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/who-runs-the-world-solid-proof-that-a-core-group-of-wealthy-elitists-is-pulling-the-strings |
| Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Rally on FOMC Day Posted: 30 Jan 2013 02:27 PM PST  This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now |
| Gold Seeker Closing Report: Gold and Silver Gain About 1% and 2% Posted: 30 Jan 2013 02:14 PM PST Gold rose $6 to $1668.70 in Asia before it fell to see a slight loss at $1661.60 by a little after 8AM EST, but it then climbed to as high as $1683.50 just after today's fed announcement and the yellow metal and ended with a gain of 0.83%. Silver slipped to as low as $31.24 by a little after 8AM EST, but it then shot to as high as $32.24 and ended with a gain of 2.01%. |
| Stocks Catch-Down To Credit As Silver Surges Posted: 30 Jan 2013 02:07 PM PST We noted yesterday the growing disconnect between stocks and credit - today saw stocks start to play catch-down. High-yield credit (specifically HYG - the bond ETF) has fallen four days in a row - its biggest four day plunge in over 2 months (with today's drop the biggest single-day drop in almost 4 months) amid mega volume. VIX (another notable disconnect) continued to push higher (above 14% for the first time in 3 weeks). Treasuries had been leaking higher in yield on the week (30Y +8bps as FOMC hit) but slid lower as the post-FOMC day wore on. The USD weakness (led by significant strength in CHF and EUR) supported precious metals (and commodities broadly) but not stocks. Silver are up almost 3% on the week (and Gold outperforming USD's implied shift). Homebuilders faded from the open with all the QE-sensitive sectors (Materials, Energy, and Discretionary) all red on the week now. It would appear that bonds recoupling (higher in yield) with stocks was the end of the catalyst for this run higher for now as divergences are appearing everywhere.
S&P 500 futures went red on the week at the close...Worst day in a month!
Something unusual happened... the S&P 500 futures fell from the EU close to the US close... Trannies lost their way today - and are beginning the reversion...(YTD performance for the mahor indices - except RUT sorry)
and YTD performance for financials...
As post-FOMC saw stocks losing the most...as bonds rallied...
It would appear that GDP was today's early trigger for the PMs...
FX markets saw USD weakness continue - led by quite serious strength in CHF...which seemed to trigger off the start of bad news from Italy...
Divergence #1: VIX vs Stocks
Divergence #2: HY Bonds vs Stocks
Divergence #3: Credit Spreads vs Stocks
Divergence #4: Gold and Stocks/Bonds
Source: Bloomberg and Capital Context Capital Context (@CapitalContext) LLC is the leader in integrating credit-market data to actively trade equity markets. From our world-renowned intraday 'CONTEXT' and 'SPY Arb' models to the daily long-short equity portfolio, sector-weight updates and tactical asset-allocation strategies, Capital Context offers sophisticated hedge-fund strategies to the active trading community.
Bonus Chart: RIMMberrrr.... |
| Gold Resource Corporation Declares January Monthly Dividend Posted: 30 Jan 2013 02:01 PM PST Gold Resource Corporation ( NYSE MKT : GORO ) declares its instituted monthly dividend of $0.06 per common share for January 2013 payable on February 25, 2013 to shareholders of record as of February 11, 2013. Gold Resource Corporation is a low-cost gold producer with operations in southern Mexico. |
If silver decisively breaks $32.50 we will see momentum-based buying come into the market. This is what is necessary to fuel a sharp uptrend in silver of the type of nature that we've seen in palladium and platinum. A break of $32.50 on silver would also signal a shift in sentiment regarding inflation.
On multiple fronts there appears to have been a resumption of hostilities in the global currency wars. A subtle indication of this is the recently released report, 
Perhaps you have heard that the Fed is printing money to get out of the crisis and that such actions cannot possibly end other than in even more money being printed and in the dollar losing its ability to buy you tangible assets. In our essay on gold and the dollar collapse we pointed out that since 1970 the debt numbers have gone up more than 40-fold (!). In 2002, future Fed chairman Ben Bernanke noted that "the U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at no cost." In keeping with these words, Bernanke has played an important role in the introduction of three rounds of what is known today as quantitative easing (QE) – programs expanding the money supply beyond the usual. The bill for QEs is $2.25 trillion and counting. As of January 17, 2013, U.S. debt totaled $16.4 trillion. These extraordinary numbers call for a deeper analysis and today we focus on what QE actually is.
The "2013 Mineral Commodities Summaries" released by the U.S. Geological Survey Tuesday revealed that, in 2012, the estimated total value of U.S. mineral production increased for the third consecutive year.
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