It's Official: German Economy Minister Demands Surrender Of Greek Budget Policy, Says It Is First Of Many Such Sovereign "Requests"

While over the past 2 days there may have been some confusion as to who, what, how or where is demanding that Greece abdicate fiscal sovereignty (with some of our German readers supposedly insulted by the suggestion that this idea originated in Berlin, and specifically with politicians elected by a majority of the German population), today's quotefest from German Economy Minister Philipp Roesler appearing in Germany's Bild should put any such questions to bed. And from this point on, Greece would be advised to not play dumb anymore vis-a-vis German annexation demands. So from Reuters, "Greece must surrender control of its budget policy to outside institutions if it cannot implement reforms attached to euro zone rescue measures, the German economy minister was quoted as saying on Sunday. Philipp Roesler became the first German cabinet member to openly endorse a proposal for Greece to surrender budget control after Reuters quoted a European source on Friday as saying Berlin wants Athens to give up budget control." And some bad news for our Portuguese (and then Spanish) readers: you are next.

Iran Blinks, Delays Vote On European Crude Export Halt Even As US Escalates Military Developments Against Country

After it was the west backing down from further unnecessary escalation with Iran two weeks ago, when Israel and the US delayed indefinitely joint naval operations in the Arabian Gulf, it is now Iran's turn to blink. Following reports that Iran would pass a law halting crude exports to European countries, in advance of the full-blown embargo expected to take place some time by June, or as soon as European countries have found alternative supplies, we now learn that "Iran's parliament on Sunday postponed the debate over the bill." This is happening just as nuclear inspectors are arriving in the country "to probe allegations of a secret atomic weapons program." Yet does this mean that Iran has just exposed a major weakness that the West will immediately pounce on? It is still unclear - Reuters reports that "Iran's oil minister said on Sunday the Islamic state would soon stop exporting crude to "some" countries, the state news agency IRNA reported." Naturally the vague, open-endedness of this statement makes it quite clear that it was Iran's turn to de-escalate this time around. Or does this simply mean that Iran has been unable to conclude alternative oil trade arrangements with China, Russia and India just yet?

They Want to Kill Your Internet Freedom – Say HELL NO to ACTA

ACTA is Worse Than SOPA, Here’s What You Need To Know

(NaturalNews) As a warrior for Internet freedom, you helped defeat the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA by supporting Web black outs by sites like Wikipedia and by contacting your lawmaker to voice your displeasure. So loud was your voice that even the president of the United States sided with you in opposing it.
But don’t take a deep sigh of relief because, after all, we’re talking about a merger of Washington, D.C., and Hollywood here, as well as global interests. After the motion picture industry, its subsidiaries and all “interested parties” have spent nearly $150 million lobbying for some sort of Internet-centric “anti-piracy” bill, you should have known the powers that be would return.

And they have, only this time they are pushing something far more onerous: ACTA, or the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.
Read More @ NaturalNews.com

The Coming Paradigm Shift in Silver

The biggest problem for investors today in trying to forecast the future price of silver is the enormous amount of contradictory analysis on the Internet. There are bulls, bears, paper traders, physical buyers, technical analysts, hedge funds, commercial banks and silver manufacturers all trying to play a part in this highly volatile silver market. Trying to sift through the huge volumes of silver analysis on the internet can be extremely frustrating. In addition, some of this information is not meant to inform, but rather to confuse or mislead the investor.There is a great deal of misinformation on the internet when it comes to silver. I find it ironic that one of the so-called “bullion specialists” seems to give bearish commentary whenever the price of gold or silver rises to new highs. This is akin to a CEO of a corporation telling the media and shareholders that the company’s stock price is too high and needs to drop down to more sustainable levels. What CEO on Earth would say something as stupid as this with the best interest of the company and shareholders in mind? Furthermore, how many CEOs would keep their job if they repeated this over and over for the past several years, and got it wrong time and time again?
Read More @ TFMetalsReport.com

Richard Russell: Gold Threatening Dollar’s Reserve Currency Status

With the Fed announcement sending gold soaring more than 4% this week and silver almost 7%, Richard Russell is talking about gold replacing the dollar in international transactions, and taking over as the ‘King of Currencies.’ The Godfather of newsletter writers, had this to say in his latest commentary: “In a deal concluded in the 1970s, it was agreed that all transactions of oil would be done in US dollars. Thus the US dollar became the world’s reserve currency, used for trading in most materials and commodities.”Richard Russell continues: Read More @ KingWorldNews.com

Goldman's Tom Stolper Conducts Sunday Hitfest On The USD

It is one thing for Tom Stolper to release precious tidbits about what is not going to happen in the future on a weekday - for those we are very grateful. But doing so on god's (or is that Goldman's) day is truly a first. In a note just blasted out, it would appear there is no rest for the Stolper, and according to the world's most admired FX strategist (remember: batting 0.000 is just as useful as batting 1.000), "Dollar downside forces on the rise" and that Goldman is positioned "short the USD again"... Just as Goldman was positioned long the Russell 2000 literally the minute the market topped on Thursday (no joke - check it). And to think it was only three weeks ago that the same strategist saw downside risks for the EURUSD to 1.20...

more »

The Was An Unbelievable Change In The Balance Of Demand For Raw Materials

Admin at Marc Faber Blog - 3 hours ago

It has never happened before that a country's share of commodity consumption for aluminum, copper, zinc and nickel goes from 10 per cent in the year 2000 to 30 or 40 per cent in just 10 years. It's an unbelievable change in the balance of demand for raw materials. "A consumer-driven economy is much less cyclical than a capital-spending economy. If the Chinese economy experiences a significant slowdown, it will have a huge impact on the demand for commodities. - *in Edmonton Journal* Related, United States Oil Fund (USO), Powershares DB Base Metals Fund ETF (DBB), Freeport-McMoRan Co... more » 

Registered Silver Ounces At the Comex

There are 49,436 contracts currently open for the next delivery month which is March 2012. Each contract represents 5,000 ounces. That is 247.18 million ounces of silver being traded for March delivery against a registered 36.56 million ounces. This is a subset of all the contracts going out over the year.The is leverage of about 6.8 to 1. It ‘works’ because most contracts are speculative and settled for cash. Comex is not where one goes for the delivery of a large amount of silver.
I think that over time the US markets will become increasingly less relevant as a price-setting mechanism for a number of commodity prices including the metals.
The failure of MF Global and the blatant cheating of the customers, both before and after the fact, will accelerate the process of failure.
It really is shocking, all the more so because so few people see it and understand its significance in the coming crisis of confidence in the US markets.
Read More @ JessesCrossRoadsCafe.Blogspot.com

A Shrinking Trust Horizon — And Hard Times In The City

Nicole Foss, who under the pen name Stoneleigh co-edits the Automatic Earth website, just did a long-form interview with an Italian magazine where she she lays out her peak energy, societal collapse thesis in the coherent, accessible way that fans of her writing have come to expect. One part was especially interesting:

When you have economic contraction you also have a substantial contraction of the trust horizon. This deprives political institutions at the national and international level of the trust that would give them political legitimacy. They become stranded assets from a trust perspective. People no longer internalize the rules that those institutions are attempting to impose. The response is typically surveillance, coercion, and repression. This picture basically suggests that it is pointless to look for solutions from the top down. It is not solutions that will come from the top down but more problems.

Read More @ DollarCollapse.com

Iran Sanctions Conducive to Weak Dollar and Spiralling Gold Prices

We are trying to figure out the best way to describe the banking and oil sanctions against Iran, which are blatant acts of war. Just look back in history at similar situations and you will see what we are referring too. It is simple incompetence or is the allied plan a false flag feint in order to distract attention away from debt problems?A month ago when the US was trying to terrorize Syria and Iran with oil and banking sanctions we said they did not have a chance of winning. Iran’s nations that are friendlies, such as China, India and Russia are major nations that will assist in the circumvention of some 70% of those sanctions. As we predicted all the excitement in the Straight of Hormuz was just that, another distraction. This week the USS Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft Carrier, went through the Straight, which tells us as we said earlier, it was all just a game. That relieved pressure of financial markets in Europe, the UK and US.
Read More @ GoldSeek.com

Washington’s War on Syria

On January 28, Arab League monitors suspended operations in Syria. In early February, they’ll decide whether to end them altogether. League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby blamed Assad for “resort(ing) to escalating the military option in complete violation of (his) commitments.”In fact, he’s contesting a Western-generated insurgency. League despots support it. They also condoned NATO’s Libya war, including massacres too great to ignore.
They back NATO’s plan to colonize, occupy and plunder Middle East states, including Iraq, Libya, Syria and Iran, as well as ongoing atrocities in Bahrain, Yemen, Somalia, Palestine, and elsewhere in the region.
On December 26, Arab League observers began monitoring Syrian cities. Sudanese General Mohammed Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi led them. Instead of delivering the goods as planned, he called Assad “cooperative.”
Ergo, end the mission. Initiate Plan B.
Read More @ SJLendman.Blogspot.com

GREAT INTERVIEW: Chris Martenson Says History Will Certainly Repeat Itself – 01-27-2012

I finally got a chance to sit down with Chris Martenson. I’ve been reading his ChrisMaternsonReport for some time now. For years he’s been saying the US was going to get into some sort of credit crisis, and “Da Boyz” were going to try and print our way out of it. Chris and I agree, we are all witnessing a debt super cycle that’s in the process of coming to its conclusion. We are living in the tail end of a 40 year global credit bubble. For the past four decades, the entire world has been growing credit/debt faster than underlying economies. Economic growth is measured by GDP, but GDP is a fraudulent measure. GDP doesn’t really measure the wealth creation of an economy; it measures consumption, which in our society has become synonymous with wealth. But wealth is really something totally different than consumption. Chris and I agree, the calculation of GDP should not include the effects of going into debt simply to consume. Consider, Bernie Madoff who contributed 65 billion to GDP, but now all that money has just disappeared. Same with other entities that contribute to GDP like MF global.
The government continues to print money mostly for consumption, not investment. They are just kicking the can down the road, and overstating the wealth of the economy. We cannot print our way to prosperity.
Click Here to Listen to the Podcast

RED ALERT: New Jersey: Assembly Committee to Consider Ammo Ban & More

from NRAila.org:
On Monday, January 30, the New Jersey Assembly Law and Public Safety Committee is scheduled to consider Assembly Bill 588 and Assembly Bill 1013. The hearing will be held at 2:00 p.m. in Committee Room 16, 4th Floor, State House Annex in Trenton.
Sponsored by Assemblyman L. Grace Spencer (D-29), A588 is cleverly disguised as police safety legislation aimed at armor piercing ammunition (which is already prohibited under federal and state law). The measure actually opens the door to a sweeping ammunition ban by an unelected public official by executive fiat. Common hunting, target, and self-defense ammunition would be subject to ban, along with BB’s, airgun pellets, and non-metallic ammunition like plastic airsoft pellets, if the Attorney General decides that they pose a threat to the safety and well being of law enforcement.
Read More @ NRAila.org

Total Donations in 2012  $10.00  (Thank You James H.)

Total Donations in 2011 $155.00 (6 Donors Thank You)

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