Alasdair Macleod: Raw inflation via SDRs is next in central banking's scheme

 

 

Gross Profit Margin For S&P 500 Companies Tumbles In Q3, Worst Sequential Drop Since Q1 2009

Even with the growth in rest of the world slowly grinding to a halt and in many places contracting (more on the in an upcoming post), the US continues to be spared from what increasingly appears as a perfect worldwide economic storm due to one thing and one thing only: resilient US corporate revenues and earnings. So now that Q3 is officially in the books, and we are starting to look for Year End numbers, we decided to do the quarterly Capital IQ analysis looking at S&P 500 companies (ex financials), which amounts to the 420 companies supposed to keep America "decoupled" from the rest of the world, and look at trends in revenue and gross profit. We found something troubling: while topline numbers continue to grow, and rose 2.6% in Q3 over Q2 (a substantial slow down from the 4.3% rise in Q2 compared to Q1), profits as represented by gross margins, fared far less well as total Gross Profit margins declined by 1.9% from 42.6% in Q2, almost on par with the recent historic record high of 42.8% from December 2009, to a two year low of 41.8%: a number seen last in Q1 2011 when commodity input costs soared and crushed both margins and bottom lines. Aside from the 1.9% drop in March 2010, the next worst drop in margins was back in March 2009. This time however there was no surge in commodity prices: in fact in the three months between June and August, input costs on the margin were declining substantially, or so the US government would like us to believe. And while corporate EPS did not broadly surprise to the downside, this was a function of top line pull through still going strong. So how much longer until the revenue potential of these 420 workhorse companies plateaus and start dropping? What happens to record corporate EPS if margin pressures are coupled with top line weakness? We already have one of the components: how long until the stresses in Europe and now China materialize into top line misses? We will find out in just over a month when companies begin reporting their full year numbers. Or worse, look for disappointing revenue preannouncements: while so far avoided, this time around it will be far more difficult to kick the revenue can into the future with Europe now officially entering a recession.

Guest Post: Furious At Latest U.S. Attack, Pakistan Shuts Down Resupply Routes To Afghanistan "Permanently"

NATO recently literally shot itself in the foot, imperiling the resupply of International Assistance Forces (ISAF) in Afghanistan by shooting up two Pakistani border posts in a “hot pursuit’ raid. Given that roughly 100 fuel tanker trucks along with 200 other trucks loaded with NATO supplies cross into Afghanistan each day from Pakistan, Pakistan’s closure of the border has ominous long-term consequences for the logistical resupply of ISAF forces, even as Pentagon officials downplay the issue and scramble for alternative resupply routes. Pakistan, long angry about ISAF/NATO cross border raids, has apparently reached the end of its tether. Following the 26 November NATO aerial assault on two border posts in Mohmand Agency in Pakistan’s turbulent NorthWest Frontier Province, Islamabad promptly sealed its border with Afghanistan to NATO supplies after the allied strikes killed 24 Pakistani soldiers.

James Turk: The transAtlantic panic

 

  

New York Sun: Bernanke's forgotten footnote

 

 

Greg Weldon predicts the magic number for gold's breakout

 

 

China Vice-Finance Minister Warns Crisis Worse than 2008

the link is here.

 

 

 

 

Will World War III Be Between the US and China?

The link is here.

 

 

 

 

The World from Berlin: 'Never Before Has the World Been as Close to War with Iran'

the link is here.

 

 

 

 

US Says Americans Are MILITARY Targets in the War on Terror...and Why the White House...Not the Courts...Gets to Decide Who Is a Legitimate Target

The link is here.

 

 

 

Michael Kosares: For Nine Years Gold Has Yielded 8.5% Annually after Inflation

the link is here.

 

 

 

 

Human Freedom Rests on Gold Redeemable Money: Howard Buffett

Is there a connection between Human Freedom and A Gold Redeemable Money? At first glance it would seem that money belongs to the world of economics and human freedom to the political sphere.

But when you recall that one of the first moves by Lenin, Mussolini and Hitler was to outlaw individual ownership of gold, you begin to sense that there may be some connection between money, redeemable in gold, and the rare prize known as human liberty.

Also, when you find that Lenin declared and demonstrated that a sure way to overturn the existing social order and bring about communism was by printing press paper money, then again you are impressed with the possibility of a relationship between a gold-backed money and human freedom.

Howard Buffett, the US Congressman from Nebraska, wrote this essay on June 5, 1948...about four months before I was born. It's a very long read, but from what I've read so far, I'd guess that a large portion of Alan Greenspan's famous essay Gold and Economic Freedom that ended up in Ayn Rand's classic 1967 tome Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal was plagiarized from this essay.

For all you newbie gold and silver bugs out there, this is another must read...and it wouldn't hurt the rest of us to read it, either. I'm sure that Howard would be horrified to see how his son has turned out...now completely consumed by the dark side of The Force.

and the link to the pdf file, which is posted over at the fame.org website, is here.

 

 

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