Name The New Reserve Currency: China Imports More Gold In 2012 Than All ECB Holdings

The last time we looked at monthly Chinese imports of gold from Hong Kong in 2012, the comparable country in question was Portugal (whose citizens, if not central bank, incidentally have run out of gold to sell), because that is whose total gold holdings (at 382.5 tons) Chinese imports had just surpassed. Fast forward a month later, and the update is even more disturbing. In July, Chinese gold imports from HK, after two months of declines, have picked up once more and hit a 3-month high of 75.8 tons. While it is notable that this number is double the 38.1 tons imported a year prior, and that year-to-date imports are now a record 458.6 tons, well over four times greater than the seven month total in 2011 which was 103.9 tons, what is far more important is that in the first seven months of 2012 alone China has imported nearly as much gold as the total holdings of the hedge fund at the heart of the Eurozone, elsewhere known simply as the European Central Bank, and just as importantly considering the import run-rate has hardly slowed down in August, which data we will have in a few weeks, it is now safe to say that in 2012 alone China has imported more gold than the ECB's entire official 502.1 tons of holdings.

Analyze This - The Fed Is Not Printing Enough Money!

Problem: this marginal utility of debt has trended lower and lower over the years, and actually reached zero in 2009. Meaning: you can add as much debt as you want, and it still won’t give you any additional GDP. To repeat: no amount of additional debt seems to be able to get economic growth going again. That is a dramatic revelation. We might have reached the maximum debt-bearing capability of the economy. If true, no growth is possible unless debt-to-GDP levels fell back to sustainable levels (in order to restart the debt cycle). This could take years. At this point, the only way to reset the debt cycle is to get rid of debt.... The amounts needed for the Fed to be able to create inflation are much, much higher than what we have seen so far. And it is not guaranteed to work. Destroying the trust in the value of a fiat currency is a dangerous experiment with mostly adverse consequences.

The Socialist Counter-revolution Begins: France's Richest Man Seeks Belgian Citizenship

A few months ago when the new French socialist president gave details of his particular version of the "fairness doctrine" and said he would tax millionaires at 75%, we said that "we are rotating our secular long thesis away from Belgian caterers and into tax offshoring advisors, now that nobody in the 1% will pay any taxes ever again." While there was an element of hyperbole in the above statement, the implication was clear: France's richest will actively seek tax havens which don't seek to extract three quarters of their earnings, in the process depriving France (and other countries who adopt comparable surtaxes on the rich) of critical tax revenues. It took three months for this to be confirmed, and with a bang at that. The WSJ reports that Bernard Arnault, the CEO of LVMH, and the richest man in France, has decided to forego hollow Buffetian rhetoric that paying extra tax is one's sworn duty, and has sought Belgian citizenship.

Reuters Video: Global Outlook

Admin at Jim Rogers Blog - 27 minutes ago

Latest video interview with Reuters. * **Jim Rogers is an author, financial commentator and successful international investor. He has been frequently featured in Time, The New York Times, Barron’s, Forbes, Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times and is a regular guest on Bloomberg and CNBC.*

 

Holding Physical Gold Regardless Of The Economic Outcome

Admin at Marc Faber Blog - 1 hour ago

I would hold physical gold with a country that has a culture with gold such as Australia. In a collapse, the gold price could fall 50 percent, but if everything else falls by 90 percent, then you are relatively well off. So I would hold some physical gold regardless of the economic outcome. - *in CNBC Asia* * * *Marc Faber is an international investor known for his uncanny predictions of the stock market and futures markets around the world.*

 

Poor jobs report causes gold and silver to skyrocket/Reports from Europe on their "operation twist"

Harvey Organ at Harvey Organ's - The Daily Gold and Silver Report - 1 hour ago

Good morning Ladies and Gentlemen: Gold had a monstrous day on Friday closing at $1737.70, rising by $35.10 dollars on the day.  Silver joined in the fun rising by $1.02 to finish the comex session at $33.64. In the close of the access market here are your final prices for gold and silver: gold: $1735.30 silver:  $33.68 Gold and silver jumped due to the high expectation that official QEIII

 

Equity Market Continues To Defy Opinion

Eric De Groot at Eric De Groot - 2 hours ago

Many investors convinced this rally has no legs have sold their equity positions or shorted the advance in anticipation of a big decline around the corner. The message of the market, however, does not support this position. AD(E), a graphical representation of trend energy for equities, has surged to a new highs even as price lagged (chart 1). This positive divergence,... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

 

Calls For Short the EU Trade Just Got A Lot Quieter

Eric De Groot at Eric De Groot - 3 hours ago

The most crowded trade on the planet has turned bad, the short the EU trade. How about 1.305 to 1.32? The expat euro snobs are bleeding today. Jim Source: jsmineset.com Jim, A lingering DI reading around 60 suggested persistent accumulation of the Euro from 2011 to 2012 while talking head train screamed "short the EU trade!" to anyone that would... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

 

Friday Night: Chris Hedges and Jonathan Haidt on Corporations, Liberals, and Conservatives 

Subprime Auto Nation

Have you heard the news? Auto sales are booming. Total sales for the month of August were 1,285,202 vehicles, according to Autodata Corp, the highest monthly sales figure for any August since 2007, when 1.47 million autos were sold in the United States. Year to date auto sales have totaled 9.7 million and are on track to reach 14.5 million. Between 2006 and 2007, auto sales ranged between 16 million and 18 million. They crashed below 10 million in 2009. The Keynesians running our government have pulled out all the stops to restart this engine of consumer spending. First they wasted $3 billion of taxpayer funds on the Cash for Clunkers debacle. Almost 700,000 perfectly good cars were destroyed in order to keep union workers happy.  This Keynesian brain fart distorted the used car market for two years, raising prices for cars needed by the working poor. After that miserable failure, they realized the true secret to selling vehicles is to give them away to anyone that can scratch an X on a loan document, with 0% interest for 60 months, financed by Federal government controlled banking interests. Add in some massive channel stuffing and presto!!! – You’ve got an auto sales boom.... This is America, land of the delusional and home of the vain. The appearance of success is more important than actual success.

Food Inflation, Food Shortages And Food Riots Are Coming

by Madison Ruppert, Activist Post
A devastating global food crisis unlike anything we have ever seen in modern times is coming. Crippling drought and bizarre weather patterns have damaged food production all over the world this summer, and the UN and the World Bank have both issued ominous warnings about the food inflation that is coming.
To those of us in the Western world, a rise in the price of food can be a major inconvenience, but in the developing world it can mean the difference between life and death. Just remember what happened back in 2008. When food prices hit record highs it led to food riots in 28 different countries. Today, there are approximately 2 billion people that are malnourished around the globe. Even rumors of food shortages are enough to spark mass chaos in many areas of the planet. When people fear that they are not going to be able to feed their families they tend to get very desperate. That is why a recent CNN article declared that “2013 will be a year of serious global crisis“.

The truth is that we are not just facing rumors of a global food crisis – one is actually starting to unfold right in front of our eyes. The United States experienced the worst drought in more than 50 years this summer, and some experts are already declaring that the weather has been so dry for so long that tremendous damage has already been done to next year’s crops. Read More @ Activist Post

How "Crazy Survivalists" Make The World A Better Place

I was recently interviewed by a journalist for a local newspaper who was developing a story on the exponential rise of the “prepper lifestyle” in America, most especially in Western Montana.  Being an outsider to the Liberty Movement, she was naturally curious as to what motivated us to make what some in our culture would see as a drastic and bewildering leap away from the mainstream.  She was equally fascinated with our willingness to travel great distances and make substantial sacrifices to live in regions like the American Redoubt.  I will not deny, Montana has indeed become a “hotbed” of survivalism and Constitutionalism, or what the Southern Poverty Law Center would call “extremism and domestic terrorism”.  I lived in Pittsburgh for years while writing for Neithercorp and Alt-Market and rarely ran into like minded individuals aware of the tenuous status of our society.  Within days of moving to Montana, I was being recognized by complete strangers in supermarkets excited to discuss the inner workings of Keynesian monetary corruption, precious metals investment, and Alinsky disinformation tactics.  Yeah…I know…it’s weird. After living for a while in the Redoubt, you begin to forget that there are still many people in this country that are utterly oblivious to the epic dangers around them, as well as painfully helpless in knowing what to do when those dangers land on their doorsteps.  Speaking with the newspaper reporter, and my experiences at Paulfest in Tampa, Florida, reminded me that the world has yet to be reminded of the value of survivalism.  There is still a gap, a disconnect, a psychological twitch of the masses, and it compels me to explain, yet again, what they are missing.

Explaining The Market's Brand New 15x Forward Multiple

Actually not really, but all one can do is laugh since in some centrally planned parallel universe, the entire world entering manufacturing contraction translates into a 4 year (and just shy of all time) stock market high...

Stocks Spike In (And After) Close To New Post-2008 High As Volume Resumes Slide

A few hours after the US reported a jobs number which missed consensus estimates on broad weakness, which saw a nearly 400K increase in those no longer even caring about work, and which confirmed that the economic deteriorating is nowhere close to ending, stocks did their thing and with no news, and on no volume (the same reason why like Nomura, ever fewer banks can afford to keep trading desks), decided to surge into the close even as volume slid, with the NYSE trading its new post-Knight normal average of a few shares over half a billion. This sent the ES to a new post-2008 high. In other news, we are approaching 15x forward P/E even as the world's global economies are grinding to a screeching halt.Central planning is here to stay and the stock market will merely levitate ever higher on hope that the central bankers have it all under control.

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