by Jeb Handwerger, via SilverBearCafe.com:
Rarely has such technical destruction been visited on stalwart sectors such as gold, silver and the mining stocks(GDX). The silver charts reveal technical damage not seen since the destruction of 1984. It can only be conjecture that can account for a once in a generation obliteration of a once hallowed sector. It must be remembered that both gold(GLD) and silver(SLV) had major moves earlier this year to the $1900 and $50, surpassing overhead resistance and reaching overbought territory. This may be the reason why the decline in precious metal is overextended and extremely oversold. We urged caution back in April for silver and in September for gold. Silver has characteristically corrected close to 50% from its highs, while gold has fallen less than 20%. Pullbacks are normal and restorative in a secular bull market in precious metals especially after explosive moves.
Unless such technical destruction is reflective of an upcoming geopolitical news development, we must look for more mundane causes. When the woods are ablaze, the fire obliterates the sequoias at the same time they incinerate the pines. The recent declines may be the result of a rush to the U.S. dollar (UUP) and treasuries (TLT).
Read More @ SilverBearCafe.com
Ron Paul: Mitt Romney is a Serial Flip-Flopper & Part of the Status Quo
Making Sense Of 2011
12/31/2011 - 14:14
The Most Significant Developments of 2011 with Trends in 2012
Two Lectures On The History Of Austrian Economics
When
it comes to the types of people in this world, there are those who say
that the only way to fix the current economic catastrophe is to keep
doing more of the same that got us in this condition in the first place
(these are the people who say mean regression is irrelevant, and 10 men
and women in an economic room can overturn the laws of math, nature,
physics, and everything else and determine what is best for 7 billion
people), and then there is everyone else. The former are called
Keynesians. The latter are not. Only those in the former camp don't see
the lunacy of their fundamental premise, a good example of which is the following.
Luckily, the world is nearing the tipping point when the camp of the
former, which for the simple reason that it allowed the few to steal
from the many under the guise that it is for the benefit of all, is
about to be overrun, hopefully peacefully and amicable but not
necessarily, and the camp of the latter finally has its day in the sun.
Naturally, when that happens the status quo loses, as the entire
educational and employment paradigm is one which idolizes the former and
ridicules the latter even though the former has now proven beyond a
shadow of a doubt it is a miserable failure (ref: $20+ trillion excess debt overhang which
will, without doubt, lead to a global debt repudiation or
restructuring, with some components of "odious debt"). So for all those
still confused what some of the core premises of the ascendent "latter"
are, below we present two one-hour lectures by Israel Kirzner. We urge
readers to set aside two hours, which otherwise would be devoted to
watching rubbish on TV or waiting in line for In N Out burger, and watch
the two lectures below. Because, contrary to what the voodoo shamans
of failure will tell you, there is a way out. It is a very painful way,
but it does exist. The alternative is an assured and complete systemic
collapse once the can kicking finally fails.A Future View Of Post-Bubbledemic America
Balancing the budget in 2032 is going to be a rather easy, mechanical task for future American politicians. A constitutional amendment requiring balanced budgets will be enacted by then, and Congress will only need to tackle projected deficits by adjusting variable pension and Medicare rates – for those retired – which will have replaced the current models for Social Security and Medicare. And if worst comes to worst, there will be room for additional cuts from the budget of an already octomated military which by then will lack any hegemonic designs as other major world powers claim their legitimate stakes and defend their grounds. That’s my prognostication as we close 2011, a year of much turmoil around the world, and one with a hopeful spark for change in the United States of America, as Wall Street’s macabre face slowly becomes unveiled.
by Peter Grandich:
“He who does not bellow the truth when he knows the truth makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers.” — Charles Peguy
If there’s been one overriding theme I’ve stressed from when I turned bullish on gold at just over $300 in the spring of 2003, it’s that the financial industry and most of those who report about it and the markets hate gold. I said it’s foolhardy to expect there ever to be a universally bullish view for gold, and that we should appreciate that there will always be forces whose desire is for gold’s price to be suppressed, lower than where it would be in a free market. Ironically, those who support such price suppression are the ones who call people like me and the good people at GATA tin-foil hat wearers, fanatics, or worse.
While most of those who may be bearish on gold now or have been so recently are legitimate forecasters who just see the cup as half empty versus my view of half full, there is one human being (as a Christian, I’m desperately trying to remember that we’re all God’s children, even though this person makes me think that God must experiment at times or at least have a good sense of humor) whom I have called the Tokyo Rose of Gold Forecasters and who has not only had the worst track record since the mother of all gold bull markets began about a decade ago but who also twists facts and tries to change his own history to conceal that he has been anything but bullish and that he has missed the greatest run in gold’s history. I’m speaking of Kitco gold market analyst Jon Nadler.
A few weeks ago, I issued this challenge:
Read More @ Grandich.com
“He who does not bellow the truth when he knows the truth makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers.” — Charles Peguy
If there’s been one overriding theme I’ve stressed from when I turned bullish on gold at just over $300 in the spring of 2003, it’s that the financial industry and most of those who report about it and the markets hate gold. I said it’s foolhardy to expect there ever to be a universally bullish view for gold, and that we should appreciate that there will always be forces whose desire is for gold’s price to be suppressed, lower than where it would be in a free market. Ironically, those who support such price suppression are the ones who call people like me and the good people at GATA tin-foil hat wearers, fanatics, or worse.
While most of those who may be bearish on gold now or have been so recently are legitimate forecasters who just see the cup as half empty versus my view of half full, there is one human being (as a Christian, I’m desperately trying to remember that we’re all God’s children, even though this person makes me think that God must experiment at times or at least have a good sense of humor) whom I have called the Tokyo Rose of Gold Forecasters and who has not only had the worst track record since the mother of all gold bull markets began about a decade ago but who also twists facts and tries to change his own history to conceal that he has been anything but bullish and that he has missed the greatest run in gold’s history. I’m speaking of Kitco gold market analyst Jon Nadler.
A few weeks ago, I issued this challenge:
Read More @ Grandich.com
by Bob Chapman, The International Forecaster:
What
does one write about between Christmas and New Years? Things are
usually pretty quiet, especially in Europe. As a result we’ll give you a
little about this and a little about that.
Public institutions worldwide are fighting ratings downgrades foremost of which is France, the US and, of course, sovereigns and banks worldwide. Miracles of miracles finally the rating agencies are doing their jobs. The caper they pulled in collusion with Wall Street in rating mortgage securities should have put them all in jail for life. We’ll call these efforts makeup time for their previous sins, which they never were prosecuted for. The complaint is their methodology is unreliable. We can assure you they know exactly what they are doing. The French want them to cease and desist. That is not going to work, because the French government and banks have very serious solvency problems. Central bankers and sovereigns always believe they are above the law. Eventually they all pay the price of greed and corruption.
Read More @ TheInternationalForecaster.com
What
does one write about between Christmas and New Years? Things are
usually pretty quiet, especially in Europe. As a result we’ll give you a
little about this and a little about that.Public institutions worldwide are fighting ratings downgrades foremost of which is France, the US and, of course, sovereigns and banks worldwide. Miracles of miracles finally the rating agencies are doing their jobs. The caper they pulled in collusion with Wall Street in rating mortgage securities should have put them all in jail for life. We’ll call these efforts makeup time for their previous sins, which they never were prosecuted for. The complaint is their methodology is unreliable. We can assure you they know exactly what they are doing. The French want them to cease and desist. That is not going to work, because the French government and banks have very serious solvency problems. Central bankers and sovereigns always believe they are above the law. Eventually they all pay the price of greed and corruption.
Read More @ TheInternationalForecaster.com
Wearing
a shirt that only a mother could love, Charles Biderman of TrimTabs
offers his insightful perspective on the year ahead. Against the
backdrop of a fog-bound Sausalito, Biderman sees only one path over the
medium-term for Gold (up) as developed market central bankers print
their respective fiat currencies and emerging market central bankers
horde the one true sound money alternative. Just as we have been
pointing out, he notes that the ECB has been QE-ing in all but name and
the region faces at best a recession and at worst a depressionary
breakup. Cost averaging into a Long Gold, Short EUR position is among his favorite ideas for 2012. Furthermore, he likes non-USD commodity producers in local currencies
- implicitly long commodities and short the USD but it is his epiphany
that a 'Miracle on Main Street' is hoped for by any and every market
observer and media hack that rings truest. The hoped-for miracle that
explosive growth (just as has always been the case post WWII) is just
around the corner and will rescue us from the doldrums-like state we are
meandering through is simply our heuristic biases run wild (together
with an entire industry of asset managers and strategists who always see
10-15% appreciation ahead in broad equity markets over the next year).
Until there is a total restructuring of developed market
economies to the point where entrepreneurs are encouraged to act and
where government spending is 'closer' to government income and not to
'wish fulfillment', there can be no jump-start to growth.
Political will remains bereft of desire to do anything but kick the can
down the road - and unfortunately, that can is getting bigger and
heavier by the minute.
Now the New Year reviving old desires,
Whenever
any would-be borrower approaches a lender for a loan, he must be
prepared to offer collateral, just in case he cannot repay the loan. If
he defaults, the lender wants to be able to gain possession of the
collateral, and obtain it quickly.
With
mounting fears over the recent plunge in gold and silver and continued
volatility in markets globally, the Godfather of newsletter writers,
Richard Russell, had this to say in his latest commentary: “This year’s
close for gold marks the 11th year for higher year end gold closing.
To my knowledge this is the longest bull market of any kind in history
in which each year’s close was above the previous year. This fabulous
bull market will not end with a whisper and a fizzle. I continue to
believe that the upside gold crescendo of this bull market lies ahead.
We are watching market history.”
Dear Friends,
With
2011 coming to a close and gold and silver stabilizing after the recent
smash, today King World News interviewed acclaimed money manager
Stephen Leeb, Chairman & Chief Investment Officer of Leeb Capital
Management. KWN wanted to get his outlook for 2012 and thoughts on the
recent takedown in the metals. When asked about the action in gold,
Leeb responded, “The fact that gold has gone down, in the face of what
should be good news, has really spooked people. But there are a lot of
reasons you can have corrections, even the strongest markets have
corrections. This could have started because Paulson sold a big chunk
of his GLD.”
Presented
with little comment - equities and bonds are diverging aggressively
now as 10Y accelerates towards its all-time low yields (1.67 on 9/23).
As we noted earlier, 
With
so many questions surrounding the stability of the financial system,
John Williams of Shadowstats issued this warning in his latest
commentary: “Annual Deficits of $5 Trillion Are Not Sustainable.
Significant space was taken up in the government’s latest financial
statements to assess the sustainability of the current system. Most of
the material covered was overly misleading nonsense.”
With
the gold price tumbling, along with silver, today King World News
interviewed the man who told clients in 2002, when gold was $300, to put
up to 50% of their assets into physical gold, held outside of the
banking system. Egon von Greyerz is founder and managing partner at
Matterhorn Asset Management out of Switzerland. When asked about the
plunge in gold, von Greyerz said, “Well, Eric, I’m not really surprised
because last time I talked to you I did say gold could go down to $1,550
support and maybe even $1,420. In my view that would be quite normal
in a very thin market and I said that would probably happen by the year
end.”![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](http://www.kitconet.com/charts/metals/gold/t24_au_en_usoz_2.gif)
![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](http://www.kitconet.com/charts/metals/silver/t24_ag_en_usoz_2.gif)
