Monday, April 16, 2012

The Implications Of A Failed Monetary System

Santiago Capital has put together a concise and highly informative 10 minutes video, which explains in the amount of time that a traditional economics professor takes to prepare their coffee, virtually everything that is at risk, and fundamentally flawed, with the current monetary system. While this presentation will not be news to regular readers, we suggest it is watched with recent revelations elsewhere (certainly not here: this has been the default assumption here since day one), that it is flow, not stock that matters to price formation. Which means the exponential curve discussed below will only get ever steeper to asymptote, if the true purpose of the Fed is simply to ramp stocks come hell or high water, in its artificial pursuit of "price stability."




Donate to Ron Paul, Before It’s Too Late!






Eurocalypse Now: I Love The Smell Of Repatriation In The Afternoon

Sniffing around the moves in today's market suggest one very strong trend - that of European bank repatriation flows gathering pace. We pointed this out during the day as it occurred but looking back now, and remembering our critical analysis of these same flow patterns back in October of last year as the crisis was surging to crescendo, brings back some concerning memories. Today's cross asset-class price action had five very clear phases with the period around the European close and the afternoon in the US day session most directly evident of the generalized selling of USD-based assets and repatriating EURs in whatever format can be found. A picture paints a thousand words (perhaps more if it's scratch'n'sniff) and this one smells like forced selling - which combined with ECB margin calls and the rapidly worsening EUR-USD basis swap (funding issues) paints a rather concerning picture for (already collateral starved) European banks. As Europe faces bank downgrades (collateral calls) and auctions (real-money needed to bid in the reach-around), we suspect we will see more repatriation of EUR and understanding the flows these movements may cause will help make sense of the markets' movements during the day





Bank Of America Buries YPF

So much for YPF. Next question: what happens to Repsol (not to mention main shareholders Caixa and BBVA)? Luckily Spain has everything else under control.





 

Spanish yields

Good evening Ladies and Gentlemen; Gold finished down by $7.50 to $1648.070 at comex closing time.  Silver  joined gold as it lowered by 13 cents to $31.38. Early this morning we witnessed the Euro over USA dollar plummet to a touch below 1.30 and then it started to rally as many funds started to cash in their European trading investments as most of their investments are dollar denominated.  If more »

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - No Resolution Yet

 

"Sic Transit Gloria Pecuni" - LME Considering Ending Sterling, Allowing Renminbi Settlement


On a long enough timeline, all things come to an end. Even for such venerable venues as the London Metals Exchange, with its 130 year history, and its annual turnover of over $11 trillion in metal contracts, which also makes it the largest market for non-ferrous metals. As the English FT reminisces, "When the LME was established in 1877, Britain was one of the world’s most important manufacturing powerhouses, and the LME’s benchmark contracts for delivery in three months were designed to mirror the length of time needed to reach British ports for shipments of copper from Chile and tin from Malaysia." Furthermore, in the beginning, and all the way through 1993, the flagship copper contract was denominated in sterling, at which point it was switched to the USD following the "Black Wednesday" ERM sterling crisis, courtesy of George Soros who made about $1 billion by shorting the GBP, and formally ended the sterling's role as even an informal backup reserve currency. As of today, insult follows inury, as the LME has formally asked the members of the exchange to drop the sterling contract denomination (in addition to USD, EUR, and JPY contracts) and replace it with the Chinese renminbi. Why this sudden and dramatic, if gradual and tacit, admission that the CNY is the ascendent reserve currency? Because, as the FT reminds us, China has become the market for non-ferrous metals: it is "the dominant force in the market, accounting for more than 40 per cent of global demand for most metals and a rapidly increasing share of trading in LME futures." Add that to yesterday's news of a widening in the CNY band (which incidentally is much ado about nothing, at least for now: at best it will allow China to devalue its currency when and if it so desires much faster than before, much to Geithner's final humiliation), and to the previously reported extensive network of bilateral CNY-based trade agreements already kris-crossing Asia, and one can see why if America is not worried about the reserve status of the dollar, it damn well should be.



A Time Lapse Video On The Origins Of Globalization

Before there was seamless connectivity, before there was one global electronic currency and instantaneous global debt creation, before there was the internet, supply-chain "logistics", World Bank, IMF, and economic hitmen, there were... ships. Because in order to allow modern Ricardian economics to flourish (we would be curious to read some/any scholarly papers probing the failure of Ricardo's theories in a ZIRP regime, unfortunately there are none, as never before has the cost of money been zero essentially until regime end), and before money could be printed with impunity, backed solely by full lack of faith and eroding credit, nations had to actually trade with each other, and money was simply a means to facilitate said trade, which in turn allowed the formation of wealth and subsequent asymmetric power relationships. Needless to say, any nation that imported itself to death would be promptly wiped out by its heretofore friendly neighbors who would simply invade it when the money to buy stuff and to fund armies ran out: sadly TARGET2 was not available during Victorian times. So where are we going with this? Ben Schmidt, a Princeton graduate student, using ship logs has conceived of this tremendous time lapse of every single major known ship route taken by Dutch, Spanish and English vessels during the "age of transition", the period between 1750 and 1850, which set the stage for today's "global economy." The result is a fantastic insight into the early stages of globalization.
 

AAPL Plunges Most In Six Months

Amid the fourth heaviest volume of the year, Apple shares fell over 4% today - its largest single-day drop in six months (and largest two-day drop in 23 months) and GOOG also fell over 3%. This dragged the NASDAQ down but the S&P 500 (which was implicitly hurt by this major underperformance) managed to survive with relatively minimal damage close-to-close as the EUR repatriation drove TSY yields up and the USD down with correlations doing the rest to support stocks. Heavier volume and trade size came in as ES (the S&P 500 e-mini future) slid notably into the close though - almost 10pts off its afternoon highs and over 1% off its day-session opening levels (which were the highs). USD weakness accelerated rapidly after the European close - quite evenly distributed across all the majors but EUR weighed heavily as it retraced most of Friday's losses. The USD selling stopped around 130pm ET. The USD weakness supported some recovery from early weakness in commodities but the second largest compression in Brent-WTI in 16 months to around $15 - led by Brent more than WTI - on the Seaway reversal date being brought forward, was the biggest news in commodities. Silver ended unch and gold down modestly. Credit outperformed stocks on the day (and from open-to-close) but this seems as much credit-equity index arb as credit remains notably weaker. HYG stayed in sync with SPY today after we first noted the convergence on Friday (following the April asset allocation shift). After rallying early, Treasuries stabilized through the USD selling frenzy immediately post-European close but as the USD stabilized in the late afternoon (and AUD weakened) so Treasuries were oddly sold off (along with stocks) ending the day basically unchanged (after being lower by 4-5bps before the US open). VIX closed unchanged after opening lower and pushing to well over 20% at its worst - as 19% seemed to support it as we rallied in the afternoon. ES tested above its 50DMA once again and closed back below it on a relatively heavy day with very low average trade size.

 

The Financial System is a Hollow Shell Waiting to Collapse

by Monty Pelerin, The Daily Sheeple:
The incorrect belief that our financial system has passed its crisis continues.
No one, especially the Fed, knows how insolvent the banking system truly is. The magnitude of the problem has been deliberately hidden. Banks themselves probably don’t know the value of many assets on their balance sheets. They were ordered/allowed/instructed to keep assets valued at original costs rather than market values. This dictate/allowance was an attempt to hide the true condition of financial institutions. While valuations are grossly overstated, no one has any reasonable way to estimate by how much.
The Federal Reserve has taken many of these toxic assets off the books of banks and put them on their own balance sheet at original value. This action was taken to prevent a collapse of the banking system and reliquify the banks. Now the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet is also meaningless to the extent of these (and other) overvalued assets. Even the Fed doesn’t know how bad their balance sheet is overstated.
Read More @ TheDailySheeple.com

 

Embry – What’s Happening in China is Wildly Bullish for Gold

from KingWorldNews:
With gold near the $1,650 level and silver firmly above $31, today King World News interviewed John Embry, Chief Investment Strategist of the $10 billion strong Sprott Asset Management. Embry told KWN the financial system is built on an unsustainable mountain of debt, and over time this will create a more siginficant shift from paper markets to hard assets. He also stated that what is taking place in China right now is wildly bullish for gold. But first, here is what Embry had to say about what is happening with the gold and silver markets: “The gold and silver situation is under control of the paper manipulators at this time. I think they have an agenda to keep the gold and silver space as quiet as possible, in order to keep people away from it.”
LISTEN Now @ KingWorldNews.com


Sponsors needed... 1- 1oz Silver Eagle per Month... 

email wethesheeplez@yahoo.com if interested...

 

25 Signs That America Is A Seething Cesspool Of Filth And Corruption

from The American Dream:
Do you believe that America is a seething cesspool of filth and corruption?  If not, you might change your mind after reading this article.  Sadly, the truth is that the United States is absolutely corrupt to the core.  This is true from the very top of our society all the way to the very bottom.  The current occupant of the White House will likely go down in history as the most corrupt president in history, and that is really saying something.  Almost every single day he adds something new to his list of corrupt deeds.  He is a con man that deserves to be impeached for a whole host of reasons, but that will never happen because we have a Congress that is also deeply corrupt.  But it is not just our politicians that are corrupt.  Even the men that are supposed to be in charge of protecting the president are corrupt.  A whole bunch of them were recently discovered sleeping with prostitutes in Colombia.  We also find very deep and very pervasive corruption in our financial institutions, in our judicial system, in our police departments and in our religious institutions.  It is almost as if nearly the entire nation is saturated with filth and depravity.  It is becoming harder and harder to find men and women of integrity, and our young people have very few positive role models to look up to.  How long is our society going to be able to continue to function normally if all of this corruption gets even worse?
Read More @ EndOfTheAmericanDream.com

 

Rhetoric vs. Reality: China, Entrepreneurial Capitalism & the Turbo Tax Defense

 

Chris Whalen: Economic Hell

Financial analyst Chris Whalen on MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan show commenting on the Federal Reserve’s release of where and how they spent trillions of dollars to “save” the financial system. Much of the money went to financial institutions who give NO thanks to the U.S. taxpayer now.

 

 

Bob Hoye Says the Global Depression is Proceeding According to Plan

 

Gerald Celente, Patriot

by Andy Hoffman, MilesFranklin.com:
On Friday, Gerald Celente published his Spring 2012 Trends Journal, of which I read the entire 44 pages within two days.  This newsletter – dating back some 30 years –  is unquestionably one of the best I have ever read.
From my platform here in the “PM shadow world,” I come across an immense amount of literature, representing multiple angles on the same themes.  However, none is as thought provoking as the Trends Journal.  Most newsletters focus on the present, but few on its links to the past and future.  I do my best to make such connections, but RANTS are focused principally on educating people of what underlies the actions of financial markets.  Conversely, Celente makes us think of why things are occurring, and what the bigger picture of human history and tendencies suggest.
Like me, Celente’s “undesirable” conclusions have been castigated by the “MAINSTREAM,” labeling him a Cassandra and “conspiracy theorist.”  However, he has been DEAD-ON with his conclusions, with the foresight to carefully chronicle his forecasts for future generations.  Unfortunately, even correct predictions are typically shunned by society, as the human psyche has no interest in commending those that predict calamity – as I have learned in spades.
Read More @ Miles Franklin

 

Sources: Napolitano Lied to Congress

by Mary Chastain, Breitbart Big Gov:
It appears Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano perjured herself in front of Congress numerous times. In her new book “Fast and Furious: Barack Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal and Its Shameless Cover-Up” Townhall’s News Editor Katie Pavlich provides evidence from inside sources that Ms. Napolitano did in fact lie to Congress under oath. She also provides evidence Ms. Napolitano did know about Fast and Furious.
In September 2011 she denied any knowledge of Fast and Furious until Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was murdered on December 14, 2010. She told Senator Grassley in October 2011 she hadn’t talked to former Arizona US Attorney Dennis Burke, which is odd since they are friends and he is also her former chief of staff. Later that month she told Congressman Jason Chaffetz she didn’t talk to Attorney General Eric Holder about Fast and Furious.
Inside sources tell Ms. Pavlich a completely different story.
Read More @ Breitbart.com




Free People of the World UNITE: The Use of Gold Dinars and Silver Dirhams GOES VIRAL!

by SGT
Well friends, things are looking up for free people around the world who value REAL money. I just received an update from reader and physical precious metals stacker Dean Arif, the Program Director of Dinihari Dinar (The Dawn of the Dinar) in Malaysia.
Dean reports that the use of physical gold and physical silver in the form of gold dinars and silver dirhams, has spread from Malaysia to Indonesia and has now gone viral in Singapore, Brunei and Philippines!
Dean writes, “The silver dirham coins will unite the people of this region (Southeast Asia) as the dirhams from Indonesia can be used in Malaysia and the ones from Malaysia can be used in Singapore WITHOUT THE NEED FOR THE MONEY CHANGER’S fiat! And the coins follow WIM (World Islamic Mint) standards (consistent weight, purity and size), so they are fully interchangeable anywhere in the world, making it a true global mode of payment.
If you don’t think that’s bad news for the Central Banking criminals, check this out. Dean reports that exchanging physical silver for everyday goods is simple, and one ounce of silver – while still representing a ridiculous 50 to 1 silver to gold ratio – goes FAR. There are 31.1 grams of silver in one troy ounce, so 1/10th of an ounce, around $3.10 in silver value (USD) will buy 5 loaves of organic wholewheat bread. Read More…

 

Sponsors needed... 1- 1oz Silver Eagle per Month... 

email wethesheeplez@yahoo.com if interested...


 Please consider making a small donation, to help cover some of the labor and costs to run this blog.

Thank You
 

I'm PayPal Verified

 

 

No comments:

Post a Comment