In The First Few Days Of 2012, US Mint Sells More Silver Than In Most Months Of 2011
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/10/2012 - 18:17 In the first few days of 2012, the US mint has already sold 4.3 million ounces in silver coins. This is more than in all individual months of 2011 except for January and September, when the mint sold 6.4 million and 4.5 million ounces. Is the retail love affair with physical silver coming back with a vengeance?Charting The Price Of Gold... All The Way Back To 1265
We
have often seen requests to show the price of gold going back as long
as possible. Tonight we can oblige, with a gold price chart, indexed in
2010 British Pounds, going all the way back to 1265. To the surprise of
many, the early 1980s gold price surge is not the only time in history
when gold exploded as America's game with inflation was almost lost.
It appears that based on the surge in gold back in the late 15th
century, there was actually quite a serious need for Columbus to go
forth and find a source of gold, because last we checked Ferdinand and
Isabella did not have Bernanke's money printers back then. And yes, as
Goldman says, there were no ETFs back in the 16th century to draw
demand away from the real deal and into make believe exposure.The Mafia Is Now "Italy's Largest Bank"
Whoever says there are no winners in the European banking crisis apparently has never woken up with a horse's head in their bed. According to a new report by Italian anti-crime group SOS Impresa, as reported by Reuters, "Organised crime has tightened its grip on the Italian economy during the economic crisis, making the Mafia the country's biggest "bank" and squeezing the life out of thousands of small firms, according to a report on Tuesday." You mean kinda like Intesa credit cards demanding a 39.95% APR: we knew we had seen that "life squeezing" thing before somewhere. Of course at least with the mafia you know that it will never rely on fake Libor fixings to pretend it is alive, or need an ECB bailout the next day due to being overly invested in US subprime mortgages (unless of course Goldman's rolodex stretches even further than we thought possible). It sure does, however, bring a new definition to the term "shadow banking"... or is that the old one, where nobody cared about repos, money markets, overnight drafts, and hyperrehypothecation and all the complexity could be explained away with a baseball bat. Yet the conclusion, no matter how defined, still strikes us as hilarious: '"With 65 billion euros in liquidity, the Mafia is Italy's number one bank," said a statement from the group, which was set up in Palermo a decade ago to oppose extortion rackets against small business." Because as we pointed out yesterday, it was companies which were responsible for bailing out banks in Europe. How long then until La Cosa Nostra provides a lifeline to UniCredit, but only if half the BOD is replaced with guys in tracksuits and buzzcuts? Actually, not too long we would wager...People`s Mindset
Admin at Jim Rogers Blog - 2 hours ago
A people`s mindset becomes wrapped up in the way things are. Even if people
can believe something will happen a few years from now, they`ll still say,
"Well, that`s in years, that ain`t now." - *in Investment Biker *
*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.*
Gold advances/Ted Butler/Greece/Iran/USA now asks to raise debt ceiling officially
Harvey Organ at Harvey Organ's - The Daily Gold and Silver Report - 2 hours ago
Good
evening Ladies and Gentlemen:
Gold closed:
Gold is now above its 200 day moving average which on a technical basis
is good news. Even though the precious metals market is manipulated this
news surely bothers our bankers:
Gold Storms Above 200 DMASubmitted by Tyler Durden on 01/10/2012 08:48
-0500
200 DMA
Displaced Moving Average
Remember when various economics professors and
Mining Shares lagging the broader equity markets since August of last year
Trader Dan at Trader Dan's Market Views - 6 hours ago
The HUI has been lagging the broader US equity markets since August of last
year but has found some good buying down near levels commensurate with
valued based buying for nearly two years now.
What this tells us is that further rallies in the US equity markets should
see corresponding support continuing in the mining sector.
Now if only the ratio trade employed by the hedge funds against the miners
in relation to bullion would ever come to an end. For most of 2011, with
brief exceptions, the miners lagged poorly against the price of gold. Note
the trend has been down but the rati... more »
Gold clears initial resistance hurdle
Trader Dan at Trader Dan's Market Views - 6 hours ago
There has been a band of overhead chart resistance centered between $1630 -
$1620 that has been keeping gold in check for the last few weeks. Gold has
been probing this level for the last couple of days and has been unable to
convincingly push past it. Today that all changed as gold charged higher in
the very early hours of European trading. While it has been stymied in New
York from furthering its overnight gains (*no surprise there), *it has also
been attracting additional buying above $1630. As long as this buying
continues, gold will have sufficient momentum to launch an attack o... more »
Hedge Funds Now Hold Future Of Europe Hostage
Payback sure is a bitch. After being demonized for everything from the tiniest tick down in the EURUSD, to blowing out spreads in CDS, to plunging stocks across the insolvent continent, hedge funds, long falsely prosecuted for everything, even stuff they patently did not do, are about to have their day in the sun, precisely in the manner we predicted back in June of last year when we posted: "Greek Bailout #2 Is Dead On Arrival: A Few Good Hedge Funds May Have Called The ECB's Bluff, And Hold The Future Of The EUR Hostage." Back then we wrote: "we may suddenly find ourselves in the biggest "activist" investor drama, in which voluntary restructuring "hold out" hedge funds will settle for Cheapest to Delivery or else demand a trillion pounds of flesh from the ECB in order to keep the eurozone afloat. In other words, the drama is about to get very, very real. And, most ironically, a tiny David is about to flip the scales on the mammoth Goliath of the ECB and hold the entire European experiment hostage..." Sure enough, we were right yet again. Ekathimerini writes: "Hedge funds are taking on the powerful International Monetary Fund over its plan to slash Greece's towering debt burden as time runs out on the talks that could sway the future of Europe's single currency. The funds have built up such a powerful positions in Greek bonds that they could derail Europe's tactic of getting banks and other bondholders to share the burden of reducing the country's debt on a voluntary basis." Oh no, they will let it happen, but first Europe will pay, with real interest, for every single incident of hedge fund bashing and abuse over the past 2 years. We estimate the final tally, to US taxpayer mind you, will be about $20 billion, to remove the "nuisance factor" of hold out hedge funds. Congratulations Europe - you have proven to be a continent full of idiot "leaders" once again.Obama To Ask For Debt Ceiling Increase In "Matter Of Days"
Not even an hour after we asked the question, The Hill gives us the answer: "The Obama administration will be asking Congress to raise the debt limit in the coming days, White House press secretary Jay Carney said on Tuesday. "I'm confident it will be executed in a matter of days, not weeks," he told reporters. The notification by the administration — which had been scheduled for last month — was delayed because Congress has been holding only pro forma sessions. The White House will be asking Congress to raise the U.S. borrowing limit by $1.2 trillion. The move would mark the third and final increase from the debt-ceiling deal reached last year by Congress." Of course, the optics of yet another debt-ceiling increase, even a preapproved one, are simply horrible during campaign season. But such is life. Here is the kicker though: the US has preapproval for $1.2 trillion in debt issuance, as per the August 2011 agreement. So far so good. The problem is that since then the US has issued $900 billion in debt in five short months! In other words, somehow the remaining buffer of just $300 billion, or a final debt ceiling of $15.5 trillion, is supposed to last the US until after the presidential election, because this topic flaring up just before Obama is due to hit the debate circuit will be reelection suicide. So our question is: how will the US, which has a gross debt issuance rate of over $100 billion per month on average, last for a year with just $300 billion in dry powder? And even if the $1.2 trillion count begins from the new request, it still means the new debt ceiling will be breached some time in August/September, as we expected last year when we did the calculation assuming a $180 billion gross issuance per month ($900 billion in 5 months). We can't wait to hear the OMB's explanation.Guest Post: Another Consequence Of Economic Decline
Nearly 10-years ago to the day, the government of Argentina collapsed. Beset by weighty deficit spending and a completely unrealistic currency peg to the US dollar, Argentina became the poster child for the golden rule of economics: ‘that which is unsustainable will not be sustained.’ It’s reversion to the mean. Within a matter of days, the country had burned through several presidents, the currency collapsed, inflation soared, unemployment shot up, crime rates spiked, and the government defaulted on its debt. After limping along for most of the last decade with a socialist agenda, the government of Argentina is at it again. The economy is rapidly deteriorating, and street-inflation has surpassed 25%.Fannie CEO Michael Williams To Quit After 2 Years, Pockets Millions After Receiving $60 Billion In Bail Out Cash
A few months ago we learned that outgoing Freddie CEO Ed Haldeman quit Freddie after just two years of work, pocketing over $4 million primarily to collect over $21 billion in bailout funds from the US government. Now, it is the turn of the other broke GSE: according to a just filed 8K, Fannie Mae CEO Michael Williams is also stepping down without a replacement, so obviously the decision was made in haste and is an indication that nobody at the helm of the two largest mortgageholders want to do anything with what Obama and the Chairsatan have in store for the two behemoths holdings over $6 trillion in mortgages in their books. Incidentally, according to Forbes, Williams made $4.84 million in comp last year. His claim to fame: receiving a total of $60 billion in Treasury bailout cash (net of $17.2 billion in dividend payments) - hard job that one.Guest Post: Inside Job At The SNB?
The Swiss had a rough couple of years; first the national airline crashes, then the banking secret, and, now, their central bank. It seems someone from inside the SNB finally woke up and skilfully played the Swiss media to work on Hildebrand’s expulsion. There is only one problem for the SNB: how to get out of the hole before the Euro blows up? The sharks are already circling their prey; the Swiss Franc decoupled from the Euro the moment SNB chairman Hildebrand resigned: The exchange rate got dangerously close to the “Rubicon” of 1.20 (the level the SNB vows to defend with utmost determination). The SNB is basically 100 pips away from extinction.
by Charles P. Wallace, CNN.com:
FORTUNE — Warren Buffett once famously described credit default swaps as “financial weapons of mass destruction.” Now these complex insurance policies are once again posing a menace to America’s too-big-to-fail banks. The last time around, CDS on U.S. subprime mortgage bonds nearly brought down insurer AIG (AIG), requiring an $85 billion bailout from the U.S. Treasury. This time, the problem is European sovereign debt.
America’s banks have rightly pointed out that they are only minimally exposed to European government debt. But they have been buying and selling default protection on those bonds, doing deals mainly with investors in the eurozone. Exactly how much is not known, because CDS are held off-balance-sheet.
Some recently released European data, however, make a ballpark estimate possible. Exposure by six major American banks to CDS on Italian debt alone, for example, may be as high as $200 billion. Overall, U.S. banks may hold two-thirds of the total euro-debt CDS outstanding.
Read More @ CNN.com
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Ravenscraft a/k/a www.PodcastAnswerMan.com believes that every person
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Most importantly, Cliff is business partners with his talented wife Stephanie. He says this business has brought their relationship to a whole new level. I guess the family that podcasts together stays together. In a world where 200 plus downloads is the mark of a successful podcaster, Cliff routinely defies the odds, achieving hundreds of thousands of downloads per month.
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from Tekoa Da Silva’s Bull Market Thinking:
Over
the past few months the still-developing MF Global collapse has yet to
be fully grasped and understood by either the mainstream media or stock
investors. While most believe MFG impacted only a small segment of
sophisticated futures traders and hedgers, the pool of afflicted parties
is far deeper than most comprehend.
A number which receives very little press on this issue is the number 30,000. More than 30,000 client accounts were demolished by MFG’s trading losses. While that sounds like a lot (and it is), the number of individual investors impacted with losses is actually far greater than 30,000. The reason is many of those 30,000 individual accounts represented more than one single investor. Let me explain how that works.
Let’s say a retirement pension fund managing a total of $1B (on behalf of one million retirees) is looking for exposure to gold and silver. To obtain the exposure, the pension fund manager decides to allocate $100M (10% of the fund) to futures contracts. Now let’s go even further to say that the pension fund was one of the unlucky institutions to have opened an account with MFG before the collapse. After the futures contracts are purchased in the accounts at MFG on behalf of the pension fund, MFG goes bankrupt and takes down the entire $100M account with it.
Read More @ BullMarketThinking.com
Over
the past few months the still-developing MF Global collapse has yet to
be fully grasped and understood by either the mainstream media or stock
investors. While most believe MFG impacted only a small segment of
sophisticated futures traders and hedgers, the pool of afflicted parties
is far deeper than most comprehend.A number which receives very little press on this issue is the number 30,000. More than 30,000 client accounts were demolished by MFG’s trading losses. While that sounds like a lot (and it is), the number of individual investors impacted with losses is actually far greater than 30,000. The reason is many of those 30,000 individual accounts represented more than one single investor. Let me explain how that works.
Let’s say a retirement pension fund managing a total of $1B (on behalf of one million retirees) is looking for exposure to gold and silver. To obtain the exposure, the pension fund manager decides to allocate $100M (10% of the fund) to futures contracts. Now let’s go even further to say that the pension fund was one of the unlucky institutions to have opened an account with MFG before the collapse. After the futures contracts are purchased in the accounts at MFG on behalf of the pension fund, MFG goes bankrupt and takes down the entire $100M account with it.
Read More @ BullMarketThinking.com
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