by Martin Armstrong:
The real question that we face for all the markets is WHEN will the Sovereign Debt Crisis go into meltdown? We are in the 13th year from the Major Directional Change of 1999 that marked the birth of the Euro, low in gold and crude oil, and the bubble in shares that peaked in many countries in 2000.
Just as the United States has been obsessed with the Great Depression as government always is ready to stimulate and many see this as pending hyperinflation with the end of the world, Germany suffers from the opposite delusion. There, the fear is inflation and thus when the US tries to inflate its way out of every crisis, Germany seeks to impose austerity and create economic stagnation and decline.
Chancellor Angela Merkel managed to win in Europe when 25 out of 27 EU states agreed to a German- inspired pact for stricter budget discipline as the member states stand among the ashes of austerity with the walls crumbing around them. The two members who refused to go along with Germany were Britain and the Czech Republic. What will now dominate Europe is a quasi-automatic sanctioning mechanism that will be imposed upon any member state that now breaches the European Union budget deficit limits. The idea is to enshrine a balanced budget system that cannot possibly work.
Read More @ MartinArmstrong.org
The real question that we face for all the markets is WHEN will the Sovereign Debt Crisis go into meltdown? We are in the 13th year from the Major Directional Change of 1999 that marked the birth of the Euro, low in gold and crude oil, and the bubble in shares that peaked in many countries in 2000.
Just as the United States has been obsessed with the Great Depression as government always is ready to stimulate and many see this as pending hyperinflation with the end of the world, Germany suffers from the opposite delusion. There, the fear is inflation and thus when the US tries to inflate its way out of every crisis, Germany seeks to impose austerity and create economic stagnation and decline.
Chancellor Angela Merkel managed to win in Europe when 25 out of 27 EU states agreed to a German- inspired pact for stricter budget discipline as the member states stand among the ashes of austerity with the walls crumbing around them. The two members who refused to go along with Germany were Britain and the Czech Republic. What will now dominate Europe is a quasi-automatic sanctioning mechanism that will be imposed upon any member state that now breaches the European Union budget deficit limits. The idea is to enshrine a balanced budget system that cannot possibly work.
Read More @ MartinArmstrong.org
Goldilocks Is Back - China PMI Rises To 50.5, Modest Beat Of Expectations, Shy Of Whisper Number
China's goal-seeked economy performed admirably in January, and its Manufacturing PMI came absolutely golidlocks at 50.5, an increase from 50.3, previously, just modestly beating Wall Street expectations of a slight contraction of 40.6, yet a less than earlier whisper numbers which put it at 52. As such, thereis absolutely no indication if the PBoC will further tighten or ease in the next month, just as the PBoC likes it, because while many have been demanding easing in the last several weeks, and especially the housing market, the reality is that hot pockets of inflation still remain. Furthermore, the last thing China needs is to proceed with full on easing just as Bernanke goes ahead and launches QE x which will export more hot money, and thus inflation, to China than anywhere else, with the possible exception of gold.
No Greek Settlement from the EU Summit/Portugal/Venezuela repatriates its gold/California short of cash
Harvey Organ at Harvey Organ's - The Daily Gold and Silver Report - 1 hour ago
Good
evening Ladies and Gentlemen:
Gold closed up today by $5.80 to $1635.60 Silver fell by 42 cents to
$33.08. The European summit failed to settle on the Greek crisis while
the Portuguese debt problem continues to hound the EU. Gold and silver
were much higher in the European session but as soon as the second
London fix was in, the banking cartel raided again. The high frequency
traders
Gold knocking on the door of resistance at $1750
Trader Dan at Trader Dan's Market Views - 3 hours ago
One thing in particular that really stands out to me in today's trading
session is the resilience of the gold market even as the safe haven trades
were being put back on by a decent sized contingent of traders. The Euro
got knocked down about 50 points and the US Dollar saw a pop higher as
traders were expressing signs of nervousness over both Greece and now
Portugal. Additionally, the long bond rallied up nearly a full point and is
once again at the top end of a trading range that is now three months in
duration.
This combined with the fact that Euro Gold is extremely strong tells ... more »
Eric De Groot at Eric De Groot - 5 hours ago
Source: jsmineset.com
[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other
content, and more! ]]
So Be It
Dave in Denver at The Golden Truth - 5 hours ago
*"Fiat:" an arbitrary decree or pronouncement, especially by a person or
group of persons having absolute authority to enforce it: The king ruled by
fiat - *dictionary.com
The big topic of discussion in the cyberworld today was an interview with
Jim Sinclair, who discussed an imminent ruling by ISDA - the board of OTC
derivatives rules and enforcement - which would pronounce that any massive
haircut in value taken by Greek bondholders would not constitute an event
of default. This is not new information, as it was reported as far back as
October that ISDA would make this declara... more »
What is Euro Gold telling us?
Trader Dan at Trader Dan's Market Views - 9 hours ago
Gold priced in terms of the Euro continues to be most impressive on the
chart as it creeps ever closer to its all time high. This move upwards is a
visual telegraph that there remains deep-seated concerns over the European
sovereign debt situation, especially on the Continent itself, in spite of
the recent euphoria over "free money" for the next two years.
While the Fed has given the markets, and in particular, the wild-eyed hedge
fund community, the green light to buy "risk assets", there is an
underlying current of palpable worry which remains in our global markets.
Short-term ori... more »
Did God Hack Goldman Sachs?
It is oddly appropriate that when a reader opens the client portal of Goldman Sachs, also known as the bank that does God's work, in order to pull Jan Hatzius' take on today's economic data assortment, one would encounter the following amusingly intentional easter egg...Dead Market Exhibit A: January Volume
Presented
with little comment except to say that the total lack of volume (and
massive concentration of what volume there is at the close) is hardly
reflective of a market that is anything other than broken and dying. Last January (2011) the average number of stocks traded on the NYSE per day was 891mm shares vs 661mm for this January (a 26% drop YoY!) and this is down an incredible 59% from January 2008.Gold, Silver Winning 2012 Asset Return Race With 11 Months Left
Gold outperformed (+0.5%) today (as the rest of its commodity peers lost ground on USD strength today) and Copper and Silver underperformed. But for
January, Silver is the clear winner in the global asset return race
(at almost a 20% gain) with Gold in 2nd place at around +11.2%.
JGBs and the DXY (USD) along with UK Gilts and Oil lost the most
ground among the major assets we track. The outperformance of the
precious metals as the dollar ebbed along with the general 'last year's
losers were January's winners' and vice-versa was evident as Asia
Ex-Japan and EM equities surged along with Nasdaq (and Copper).
Long-dated Treasuries have just limped into the money
for the year as they rallied dramatically today - ending the day at
their low yields (new record 5Y lows) with 30Y now -12bps on the week. FX markets gave a little of the USD strength back in the afternoon but the rally in stocks was
almost entirely unsupported by risk assets in general (as it seemed
like a desperate low-volume try to push ES back to VWAP into the close
to hold the 50/200DMA golden cross in SPX) after this morning's dismal
macro data. Financials rallied to fill some Friday close gaps but gave some back into the close as CDS inched wider and Energy underperformed as Oil came
almost 3% off its early morning highs (managing to crawl back above $98
by the close). IG credit outperformed as HY and stocks were largely in
sync but open to close, credit outperformed stocks on a beta basis
(after overnight exuberance in stock futures faded).Amazon Slides After Missing Revenues Expectations, Guides Much Lower
Amazon
slides 10% after hours as it reports much weaker revenues of $17.43
billion on expectations of $18.26 billion. EPS are not really
comparable but seems to beat EPS of $0.16 on Exp. of $0.38. This may not
be apples to apples. More importantly, the company guides Q1 to
Operating Loss of $200MM to Income of income of $100MM, on Wall Street
Consensus of $268MM, and guides to Q1 revenue of just $120-$13.4 billion
on Estimates of $13.4 billion: pretty wide range there... This is
merely the latst time that the company has disappointed materially, yet
Wall Street keeps giving it the benefit of the doubt, on hopes that the
Kindle will finally become an iPad-like device. How much longer? Yet
the take home message is that the US consumer, contrary to rumors
otherwise, is actually not doing all that well.California To Run Out Of Cash In One Month, Controller Warns
If anyone is tired of the daily European soap opera with surrealistic tragicomic overtones, they can simply shift their gaze to the 8th largest economy in the world: the insolvent state of California, whose controller just told legislators has just over a month worth of cash left. From the Sacramento Bee: "California will run out of cash by early March if the state does not take swift action to find $3.3 billion through payment delays and borrowing, according to a letter state Controller John Chiang sent to state lawmakers today. The announcement is surprising since lawmakers previously believed the state had enough cash to last through the fiscal year that ends in June." ....uh, oops? But sure, fix the problem of excess debt by more "borrowing" why not. As for the math: "But Chiang said additional cash management solutions are needed because state tax revenues are $2.6 billion less than what Gov. Jerry Brown and state lawmakers assumed in their optimistic budget last year. Meanwhile, Chiang said, the state is spending $2.6 billion more than state leaders planned on." Quick, someone come up with a plan that involves subsidies and tariffs on China, or something else that deflects from what the source of the problem really is. Because the last thing that anyone in America would want to bring up is this thing called "responsibility" for their actions, or, as in now becoming the default case, the lack thereof. And why do that, when time spent so much more productively scapegoating this, and blaming that for one's own massive errors of judgment.Please consider making a small donation, to help cover some of the labor and costs to run this blog.
Thank You
I'm PayPal VerifiedBiderman’s Daily Edge 1/31/2012: Feeling Like a One-Eyed Man in the Land of the Blind
The
following is the transcript of David Morgan‘s presentation at today’s
Virtual Silver Investment Conference.To listen to the audio and view the
slides associated with the presentation, please attend the conference here.And I’m doing a presentation for SilverSeek on Silver in the Next
Decade, brought to you by myself, and obviously I’m the founder of
Silver-Investor.com, lots of good information for free.But silver price
has been very interesting over the last several years.In the last decade
we’ve had a nice move up in the silver market.This chart is not current
as of the date of this presentation, but it clearly gives the idea that
we have gone mostly north, been as high as $48.00 in the recent – last
year or so, down in about $34.00 range as we’re doing this at the end of
January 2012.
Read More @ SilverSeek.com
Read More @ SilverSeek.com
The
following is the transcript of James Turk’s presentation at today’s
Virtual Silver Investment Conference.To listen to the audio and view the
slides associated with the presentation, please attend the conference here.
This is James Turk and I’m pleased to be participating in this
virtual silver investment conference hosted by silverseek.com.If people
have read my material or have heard me speak in the past, they know that
I’m more bullish on silver than I am on gold. As bullish as I am on
gold I think there’s a lot more potential for silver but I’ll say right
up front, silver comes with a lot of volatility and therefore it may not
be for everyone.But if you own, if you purchase and own physical
silver, have a long term view, continue to accumulate it, view it to be a
form of savings just like you do physical gold to be a form of savings,
I think you’re gonna be quite happy with your silver purchases.
Read More @ SilverSeek.com
Read More @ SilverSeek.com
The
following is the transcript of Julian Phillips’ presentation at today’s
Virtual Silver Investment Conference.To listen to the audio and view
the slides associated with the presentation, please attend the
conference here.
My name is Julian Phillips, and I’m very pleased to be talking to you
on the SilverSeek Investment Conference 2012.I think it’s a most
opportune time for silver in particular, as well as gold, because of
events that have been taking place in the last two years.But in fact,
these events were initiated way back in 1971, when the gold price was
delinked from the monetary system and allowed to float.At the time, the
dollar was devalued against silver – sorry, against gold, all the way
through to the mid-1980s.
Read More @ SilverSeek.com
Read More @ SilverSeek.com
A Financial System Built to Fail: 2008 vs 2012
from CaseyResearch.com:
Discussions around the US and EU embargoes on Iranian oil generally focus on one thing: the price of oil. Iran produces 3.6 million barrels of oil a day and exports 2.5 million of those barrels, representing 3% of world supply. If the embargoes were to succeed in preventing half that oil from getting to market, oil prices would immediately jump 20 to 30%, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
There’s no doubt that the price of oil is important and deserves comment. But as both embargoes take effect, they will create a ripple of impacts across the oil markets that go beyond just price. From European refinery closures to a Greek default, the impacts of the embargoes would spread far beyond Iran.
Let’s start with Greece. Athens has been vocal in its concern about the embargoes, as Iran has become a key supplier to the economically beleaguered country. Greece’s existing contracts with Iran do not require financial guarantees, providing Athens with much-needed flexibility. To date, none of Greece’s other suppliers have been willing to work on such terms, which left Greece buying 100,000 barrels of Iranian oil a day to feed 30% of its demand.
Read More @ CaseyResearch.com
Discussions around the US and EU embargoes on Iranian oil generally focus on one thing: the price of oil. Iran produces 3.6 million barrels of oil a day and exports 2.5 million of those barrels, representing 3% of world supply. If the embargoes were to succeed in preventing half that oil from getting to market, oil prices would immediately jump 20 to 30%, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
There’s no doubt that the price of oil is important and deserves comment. But as both embargoes take effect, they will create a ripple of impacts across the oil markets that go beyond just price. From European refinery closures to a Greek default, the impacts of the embargoes would spread far beyond Iran.
Let’s start with Greece. Athens has been vocal in its concern about the embargoes, as Iran has become a key supplier to the economically beleaguered country. Greece’s existing contracts with Iran do not require financial guarantees, providing Athens with much-needed flexibility. To date, none of Greece’s other suppliers have been willing to work on such terms, which left Greece buying 100,000 barrels of Iranian oil a day to feed 30% of its demand.
Read More @ CaseyResearch.com
Something
very unusual recently occurred in financial journalism. If you are
from or rely on the mainstream western financial press as your primary
means of being informed – you surely wouldn’t have noticed – because
this ‘oddity’ involved a real act of investigative journalism by one Lars Schall.
Mr. Schall is a German freelance journalist who noted an ‘old quote’
of former Federal Reserve Chairman, Paul Volcker. Paul Volcker was the
U.S. Treasury Department’s undersecretary for international monetary
affairs from 1969 to 1974 and became Fed chairman in 1979 – a post he
held until 1987. More recently, Mr. Volcker has been a top economic
advisor to President Obama. The quote that intrigued Mr. Schall was
excerpted from Mr. Volcker’s memoirs and published in The Nikkei Weekly back on November 15, 2004:
Read More @ GoldSeek.com
Read More @ GoldSeek.com
The
government faces a fourth year of trillion-plus deficits in 2012,
according to new projections released Tuesday—numbers which also show
little relief in the future unless Washington comes to grips with needed
changes in its tax and spending policies.
Like Aunt Cassandra coming down from the attic, the Congressional
Budget Office steps squarely into the 2012 campaign season with the
147-page report which might have been subtitled “It’s not just the
economy stupid, it’s also the debt.”
The $1.079 trillion deficit now projected for this fiscal year ending Sept. 30 is a step backwards from what CBO had predicted in August. And to punch home its message, the non-partisan agency outlines an especially grim scenario in which Congress not only extends all the current Bush-era tax cuts but pulls the plug on the $1.2 trillion in sequester set in motion by the Budget Control Act last summer.
Read More @ Politico.com
The $1.079 trillion deficit now projected for this fiscal year ending Sept. 30 is a step backwards from what CBO had predicted in August. And to punch home its message, the non-partisan agency outlines an especially grim scenario in which Congress not only extends all the current Bush-era tax cuts but pulls the plug on the $1.2 trillion in sequester set in motion by the Budget Control Act last summer.
Read More @ Politico.com
Against whom is the European Union’s so-called “oil embargo on Iran” really aimed at?
This is an important geo-strategic question. Aside from rejecting the new E.U. measures against Iran as counter-productive, Tehran has warned the member states of the European Union that the E.U. oil embargo against Iran will hurt them and their economies far more than Iran.
Tehran has thus warned the leaders of the E.U. countries that the new sanctions are foolish and against their national and bloc interests. But is this correct? At the end of the day, who will benefit from the chain of events that are being set into motion?
Are Oil Embargos against Iran New?
Oil embargos against Iran are not new. In 1951, the Iranian government of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh with the support of the Iranian Parliament nationalized the Iranian oil industry. As a result of Dr. Mossadegh’s nationalization program, the British militarily blockaded the territorial waters and national ports of Iran with the British Royal Navy and prevented Iran from exporting its oil. They also militarily prevented Iranian trade. London also froze Iranian assets and started a campaign to isolate Iran with sanctions. The government of Dr. Mossadegh was democratic and could not be vilified easily domestically by the British, so they began to portray Mossadegh as a pawn of the Soviet Union who would turn Iran into a communist country together with his Marxist political allies.
Read More @ GlobalResearch.ca
This is an important geo-strategic question. Aside from rejecting the new E.U. measures against Iran as counter-productive, Tehran has warned the member states of the European Union that the E.U. oil embargo against Iran will hurt them and their economies far more than Iran.
Tehran has thus warned the leaders of the E.U. countries that the new sanctions are foolish and against their national and bloc interests. But is this correct? At the end of the day, who will benefit from the chain of events that are being set into motion?
Are Oil Embargos against Iran New?
Oil embargos against Iran are not new. In 1951, the Iranian government of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh with the support of the Iranian Parliament nationalized the Iranian oil industry. As a result of Dr. Mossadegh’s nationalization program, the British militarily blockaded the territorial waters and national ports of Iran with the British Royal Navy and prevented Iran from exporting its oil. They also militarily prevented Iranian trade. London also froze Iranian assets and started a campaign to isolate Iran with sanctions. The government of Dr. Mossadegh was democratic and could not be vilified easily domestically by the British, so they began to portray Mossadegh as a pawn of the Soviet Union who would turn Iran into a communist country together with his Marxist political allies.
Read More @ GlobalResearch.ca
With
gold and silver off to an incredibly strong start for 2012, today King
World News interviewed acclaimed money manager Stephen Leeb, Chairman
& Chief Investment Officer of Leeb Capital Management. Leeb
surprised KWN by predicting that silver will hit $100 this year.
But first, here is what Leeb had to say about Bill Fleckenstein’s
comments on KWN earlier today about the public coming into the gold
market: “I think (Bill) Fleckenstein is totally correct. The kind of
environment he’s talking about is the one I alluded to a little bit
earlier, namely the 1970s, where we did have this kind of stagflation.
In the mid 70s we had very high inflation, a recession, etc., yeah,
that’s exactly the kind of environment we are headed for.”
Stephen Leeb continues: Read More @ KingWorldNews.com
Stephen Leeb continues: Read More @ KingWorldNews.com
The
European Central Bank won’t solve the euro zone’s debt crisis as long
as the European Union behaves like a “dysfunctional” family, Bill Gross,
Pimco founder and co-chief investment officer, told CNBC on Tuesday.
The main problem is the split between North and South Europe, Gross
said: The northern countries have low debt and are export oriented,
while the southern economies’ debt ratios are high and their economies
are based more on domestic consumption.
“Their ability to get out from under that straightjacket I think is their biggest problem,” he said, adding that a recent summit of European Union leaders had no significant contribution to solving the euro zone’s problems.
“The EU’s 16th summit was anything but sweet,” he said. In Gross’ opinion, Greece and Portugal are “increasingly on death rows…and Merkel speaks about austerity.”
Read More @ CNBC.com
“Their ability to get out from under that straightjacket I think is their biggest problem,” he said, adding that a recent summit of European Union leaders had no significant contribution to solving the euro zone’s problems.
“The EU’s 16th summit was anything but sweet,” he said. In Gross’ opinion, Greece and Portugal are “increasingly on death rows…and Merkel speaks about austerity.”
Read More @ CNBC.com
Mike Maloney: Gold and Silver Represent Freedom and Independence
[Ed. Note:
So there's 7 billion people on planet earth, and Facebook is "worth"
$100 billion, or $14.29 for every person on planet earth, regardless of
whether or not that person is a Facebook user. Over-valued? Pssssh...
Only if you're finally ready to sell your Enron stock.]
from The Daily Bell:
Media reports suggest that Facebook will file for an IPO this week that could value the company at $100 billion — and leave the company sitting on $10 billion in cash. I’m not a financial analyst, so I’ll leave it to Wall Street to discuss and debate that valuation. But the fact is this newfound wealth could not only allow Facebook to solve its biggest business challenges, it could also help Facebook finally achieve its longstanding goal to change how marketing works. So how should Facebook use its IPO windfall? − Nate Elliott’s Blog
Dominant Social Theme: This Facebook IPO is very exciting and shows that young people can create incredible value in a short period of time. Mark Zuckerberg is a genius.
Free-Market Analysis: No, we don’t believe the hype. It’s directed history, perhaps, not reality. Zuckerberg is in his later twenties. Did you ever meet anyone who’d built a US$100 billion company in a single decade, much less at a time when most young men and women are still deciding on career choices?
Read More @ TheDailyBell.com
from The Daily Bell:
Media reports suggest that Facebook will file for an IPO this week that could value the company at $100 billion — and leave the company sitting on $10 billion in cash. I’m not a financial analyst, so I’ll leave it to Wall Street to discuss and debate that valuation. But the fact is this newfound wealth could not only allow Facebook to solve its biggest business challenges, it could also help Facebook finally achieve its longstanding goal to change how marketing works. So how should Facebook use its IPO windfall? − Nate Elliott’s Blog
Dominant Social Theme: This Facebook IPO is very exciting and shows that young people can create incredible value in a short period of time. Mark Zuckerberg is a genius.
Free-Market Analysis: No, we don’t believe the hype. It’s directed history, perhaps, not reality. Zuckerberg is in his later twenties. Did you ever meet anyone who’d built a US$100 billion company in a single decade, much less at a time when most young men and women are still deciding on career choices?
Read More @ TheDailyBell.com
by Simon Black, Sovereign Man:
Wegelin & Co used to be Switzerland’s oldest private bank. Founded in 1741, they managed to survive every threat across three centuries: revolution, financial disaster, and war… from being invaded by Napoleon to the Sonderbundskrieg civil war to Adolf Hitler.
Every threat except for one, that is: the United States Government.
I say that Wegelin “used to be” Switzerland’s oldest private bank because they’re now finished, courtesy of Uncle Sam. They had no office in the United States, no employees in the United States. They were 100% Swiss, and violated no Swiss law whatsoever.
Yet US authorities believed that a handful of Wegelin’s US clients were hiding assets and not paying taxes. The fact that the bank wasn’t subject to US law was irrelevant. The fact that the bank has zero legal responsibility in ensuring their customers filed tax forms was irrelevant.
The government crushed Wegelin regardless.
Read More @ SovereignMan.com
Wegelin & Co used to be Switzerland’s oldest private bank. Founded in 1741, they managed to survive every threat across three centuries: revolution, financial disaster, and war… from being invaded by Napoleon to the Sonderbundskrieg civil war to Adolf Hitler.
Every threat except for one, that is: the United States Government.
I say that Wegelin “used to be” Switzerland’s oldest private bank because they’re now finished, courtesy of Uncle Sam. They had no office in the United States, no employees in the United States. They were 100% Swiss, and violated no Swiss law whatsoever.
Yet US authorities believed that a handful of Wegelin’s US clients were hiding assets and not paying taxes. The fact that the bank wasn’t subject to US law was irrelevant. The fact that the bank has zero legal responsibility in ensuring their customers filed tax forms was irrelevant.
The government crushed Wegelin regardless.
Read More @ SovereignMan.com
The following is the transcript of Eric Sprott’s
presentation at today’s Virtual Silver Investment Conference.To listen
to the audio and view the slides associated with the presentation,
please attend the conference here.
Good
day ladies and gentlemen.This is Eric Sprott.It’s my pleasure to
present to this virtual forum thoughts that we have on one, the
financial markets and more particularly on gold and silver as the –
where they stand in this environment.The title of my talk is Mania, Manipulation, Meltdown
which is a topic I use very often because obviously there’s been –
there was a mania that led up to the NASDAQ peak and the moving into
what I’ve regarded as secular bear market for the last ten
years.Throughout this period we’ve had manipulation of interest rates
and currency prices and precious metals and so on and the meltdown
really has to do with where we think the whole system is going.
Read More @ SilverSeek.com
According
recent studies from the Department of Agriculture, children are hungry
in about .25 percent of homes in the United States. A 96% majority of
all parents say their children have never gone hungry because they were
unable to purchase food.
Moreover, a Scott Rasmussen poll found that 63 percent of the “poor”
have cable or satellite, 50 percent have a computer, 30 percent have at
least two cars, and 23 percent use TiVo.
Rasmussen asserts that even those Americans living below poverty line aren’t living in extremely foul conditions, as many Americans imagine. Most of them have sufficient shelter, food, clothing, and medical attention.
Read More (and Watch the Video) @ WealthWire.com
Rasmussen asserts that even those Americans living below poverty line aren’t living in extremely foul conditions, as many Americans imagine. Most of them have sufficient shelter, food, clothing, and medical attention.
Read More (and Watch the Video) @ WealthWire.com
The
post-hoc (correlation implies causation) reasons for why the initial
LTRO spurred bond buying are many-fold but as Nomura points out in a
recent note (confirming our thoughts from 
For
the past two to three decades, there has been a radical structural
transformation of the American economy from being a production economy
to a service economy with consumer driving 60% of its GDP. Due to the so
called Globalization, much of America’s manufacturing facilities have
been transferred overseas and hence with its jobs as well. Since the
beginning of the 21st century America has lost more than 50,000
manufacturing facilities either due to uncompetitive closure or being
shifted overseas. As a result more than 5 million jobs have been lost
along the way.
(NaturalNews)
During roughly the same time period that health experts worldwide have
been warning that the infamous H5N1 avian flu virus could soon morph
into a highly-transmissible, exceedingly-deadly “super strain” capable
of killing millions, scientists from around the world have been exposed
deliberately developing such a strain in laboratories.
Gold’s London AM fix this morning was USD 1,738.00, GBP 1,102.23, and EUR 1,317.27 per ounce.
While
it may have very little on effect on the actual goings-on of the world,
we are always interested in what the prognosticators might say about
debt crises and their effects on commodity prices. On one hand, a
faltering euro leaves only the dollar as a “safe” currency—meaning the
debt crisis in Europe is good for the dollar and bad for commodity
prices. But any deep analysis will show the entire system build on faith
in fiat is deeply flawed—and destined to collapse.
Much
has been said about the Baltic Dry Index over the course of the last
four years, especially in light of the credit crisis and the effects it
has had on the frequency of global shipping. Importing and exporting
has never been quite the same since 2008, and this change is made most
obvious through one of the few statistical measures left in the world
that is not subject to direct manipulation by international corporate
interests; the BDI. Today, the BDI is on the verge of making headlines
once again, being that is plummeting like a wingless 747 into the swampy
mire of what I believe will soon be historical lows. 
What is the difference between printing money and counterfeiting? There is none.
With
continued volatility in gold, silver and global stock markets, today
King World News interviewed Rick Rule, Founder of Global Resource
Investments and one of the most street smart pros in the resource
sector. KWN reached out to Rick, who is currently in New Zealand, to
find out what his thoughts were on how investors can make money in 2012.
First, here is what Rule had to say about the action in gold and
silver: “I continue to believe that when rational people are confronted
with the choice between owning dollars or euros or owning gold,
increasingly people are owning gold. I continue to believe the
intermediate and longer-term move in the gold price is higher. I think
the gold price, in US dollar terms, moves inexorably higher.”
Gold
and silver prices paused for breath yesterday following their price
breakouts last week. Gold for April delivery at the New York Comex
settled down 0.1% at $1,734.40 per troy ounce, while silver for March
delivery lost 26 cents (0.8%), settling at $33.53 per troy ounce. Both
metals have however put in good showings in trading today, with the gold
price hitting $1,740 and silver just a whisker away from $34.
Have
you ever wondered what our world is going to look like five or ten
years down the road? Well, today our world is changing at a pace that
is faster than ever before, and the decisions that we all make right now
are going to have a dramatic affect on the years ahead. In many ways,
2012 represents a huge turning point for America. There will be a
presidential election, 33 seats in the U.S. Senate will be contested and
every single seat in the U.S. House of Representatives will be up for
grabs. But the changes that are happening in America go much deeper
than politics. Anger and frustration are growing to frightening levels,
and we have become a deeply divided nation. Our affluence is rapidly
crumbling and our national values are being transformed at a staggering
pace. America is drowning in debt, addicted to entertainment and full
of people that think they know it all. America is arrogant, cocky,
smug, brash and full of pride. But if we continue down the road that we
are currently on, we will be greatly humbled someday. It is just a
matter of time.
While
so many were hoping for the siren-call of private-equity or perhaps a
reverse-merger MBO with RadioShack, CIT has once again managed to pour
well-risk-managed-credit-extension cold water on Sears short-squeeze.
SHLD is down 6% following 
Following
three-in-a-row weak macro prints, the market broadly speaking is not
happy. The S&P is 10 points off its pre-Case-Shiller highs, EURUSD
is dropping rapidly back towards 1.31, Treasury yields are falling
3-5bps across the curve, and Commodities are giving back their spike
gains from pre-US day session open. FX carry seems like a major driver
for now with AUDJPY and EURJPY most notable while the drop in the curve
and levels of the Treasury complex are adding to downward pressure on
stocks. Credit and equity markets are dropping in lockstep for now
(with HYG more volatile than its peers). The rally in European
sovereigns has stalled here as longer-dated spreads are now widening off
their intraday tights (10Y BTP back up to 6% yield) while PGBs give
back some of their ECB-enthused rally (~20bps off tights now). US equities and CONTEXT (the broad risk proxy) are in line as they drop here.
The
so-called January-Effect is almost at an end and if the market closes
near these levels, the S&P 500 will have managed a 4.4% gain or its
20th best January since 1928 (84 years) and best since 1997. The
outperformance of banks and sovereigns (LTRO) and the worst-of-the-worst
quality names (most-shorted Russell 3000 stocks +9% YTD vs Russell 3000 +5.2%), as Morgan Stanley noted recently, is not entirely surprising since the January effect is considerably larger in mid-cap and junk quality names than any other size or quality cohorts. We have pointed to the seasonal positives in 
The
market is back to being excited and bullish. Yesterday’s announcement
out of Europe was underwhelming, but no one cares as a Greek PSI
announcement is expected any moment. It will be interesting to finally
find out how many bonds sign on at the time of the agreement and who
the potential holdouts are. More importantly, once again LTRO is the talk of the town. Talk is that the demand will be €1 trillion or more (
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![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](http://www.kitconet.com/charts/metals/silver/t24_ag_en_usoz_2.gif)
