Tuesday, February 7, 2012

The Fed Resumes Printing


by Bud Conrad, Casey Research:
The Federal Reserve recently announced important policy changes after its Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting. Here are the three most important takeaways, in its own words:
1. The Committee decided today to keep the target range for the federal funds rate at 0 to 1/4 percent and currently anticipates that economic conditions – including low rates of resource utilization and a subdued outlook for inflation over the medium run – are likely to warrant exceptionally low levels for the federal funds rate at least through late 2014.
2. The Committee judges that inflation at the rate of 2 percent, as measured by the annual change in the price index for personal consumption expenditures, is most consistent over the longer run with the Federal Reserve’s statutory mandate. In the most recent projections, FOMC participants’ estimates of the longer-run normal rate of unemployment had a central tendency of 5.2 percent to 6.0 percent.
3. The Fed released FOMC participants’ target federal funds rate for the next few years.
Read More @ CaseyResearch.com

 

 

FBI Warns of Threat From Anti-Government Extremists

[Ed. Note: "Anti-Government Extremists"? We prefer the term, "anti-parasite activists"... Dear Homeland Security... you're not the only one who read George Orwell.]
by Patrick Temple-West, Reuters:
(Reuters) – Anti-government extremists opposed to taxes and regulations pose a growing threat to local law enforcement officers in the United States, the FBI warned on Monday.
These extremists, sometimes known as “sovereign citizens,” believe they can live outside any type of government authority, FBI agents said at a news conference.
The extremists may refuse to pay taxes, defy government environmental regulations and believe the United States went bankrupt by going off the gold standard.
Routine encounters with police can turn violent “at the drop of a hat,” said Stuart McArthur, deputy assistant director in the FBI’s counterterrorism division.
“We thought it was important to increase the visibility of the threat with state and local law enforcement,” he said.
Read More @ Reuters.com




Hyper Report: 120207 – Truth, Lies and Afghanistan

from HyperReport:
Please prepare now for the escalating economic and social unrest. Good day.




Greece Takes Step Closer to Default
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/cf397bb8-5003-11e1-8c9a-00144feabdc0.html#axzz...

Record Global Sales of Junk Bonds
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/e4221cfc-502f-11e1-8c9a-00144feabdc0.html

New Report Reveals Federal Reserve President Owns Millions in Gold and Platinum
http://www.thedailycrux.com/content/9788/Inflation
http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2012/02/disclosed-fed-prez-who-owns-over...

SEC Allows Some of America's Biggest Wall St. Banks To Continually Flout the Law
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2012/02/sec-allows-americas-biiggest...

"Hidden" Mortgage Fee Paying for Payroll Tax Cut
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505263_162-57371781/home-buyers-left-holding-bag-...

Chris Hedges "Brace Yourself! The American Empire Is Over & The Descent Is Going To Be Horrifying!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zotYU21qcU

Government Asks Supreme Court for More Time to Defend ObamaCare
http://thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/10770-government-asks-supreme-c...

Truth, Lies and Afghanistan
http://armedforcesjournal.com/2012/02/8904030

 

Net Asset Value Premiums of Certain Precious Metal Trusts and Funds




The Silver Bullet and the Silver Shield – Part 10. The Silver Paradigm Shift

[Ed. Note: Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6. Part 7. Part 8. Part 9.]
from TruthNeverTold:


 

 

No Question of US Backing for Russian Opposition

Saturday was a day for demonstrations in Russia. Over two hundred thousand people gathered across the country to voice their political views ahead of next month’s presidential election. Two of the largest rallies took place in the capital with supporters and opponents of the current leadership braving the bitter cold to have their say. It was the third, and biggest, opposition gathering after the Parliamentary vote two months ago which protesters claimed was rigged. Now their main demand is for a fair presidential vote in March. Author and researcher F. William Engdahl says the West is funding the Russian opposition to minimise the country’s influence on the world stage during a critical time.






Senate Passes Bill Allowing Airports To Evict TSA Screeners


Legislation could lead to despised federal agency being marginalized from aviation security
by Paul Joseph Watson, InfoWars.com:

The Senate has passed legislation that includes a provision allowing airports to replace TSA screeners with private security, opening the door for the widely loathed federal agency to be marginalized from aviation security altogether.
The bill was primarily concerned with how the Federal Aviation Authority would be funded for the next four years, but also included measures that would force the TSA to reconsider applications from airports to replace TSA workers with their own privately hired screeners.
“Security companies would have an easier time winning contracts to operate airport checkpoints,” reports Businessweek.
Following a massive nationwide backlash against the TSA’s invasive groping policies and its use of radiation-firing naked body scanners, linked by many prestigious health bodies to cancer, an increasing number of airports attempted to take responsibility for their own screening procedures by replacing TSA workers with privately hired personnel.
Read More @ InfoWars.com




Greg Weldon: The Fed is Hoping to Avoid a Nightmare

from King World News:
With gold trading near the $1,720 level, today King World News was given exclusive permission to share some of Greg Weldon’s work with our global readers. Greg is the founder of Weldon Financial and he has a following of some of the wealthiest investors in the world including individuals, institutions and financial firms. Here is a portion of what Greg has been sharing with his clients: “Of interest is the segue to be made from the Personal Income data, to the US Commercial Bank lending data, with a high degree of positive correlation between the two, as evidenced in the long-term monthly overlay chart on display below. We compare DPI (black line), Total US Commercial Loans Outstanding (red line) … and … the price of Gold (orange line).”
Greg Weldon continues: Read More @ KingWorldNews.com




‘Crunch Time’ in Greek Debt Talks

Markets are caught between joy and disconsolation at the moment. On the one hand, they know that central banks are committing to ever-greater money creation efforts in order to keep the present economic show on the road – and Mr Market loves nothing more than free money. But as long as the shadow of a disorderly Greek default persists – along with the possibility that more peripheral eurozone nations will also be forced into a similar position – bulls can’t rest easy just yet. As Reuters reports, Greek political leaders face “crunch talks” today over a rescue package that must be approved by eurozone governments, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund before February 15, “in order to complete legal procedures for a bond swap deal for a March 20 bond redemption… Citigroup expects Greece to avoid disorderly default but raised the chances of a Greek euro area exit to 50 percent over the next 18 months, up from 25-30 percent.”
Read More @ GoldMoney.com




Proof That Paying Federal Income Tax is Voluntary

Over years of studying government tyranny, monetary reform and freedom, I’ve run across a lot of information about how unconstitutional the US Income Tax is, how the 16th Amendment was never ratified by the requisite number of states, and how there’s really no law that compels citizens to pay Federal Income Tax. One of the best documentaries on this topic was the late Aaron Russo’s film “From Freedom to Fascism”. At one of Ron Paul’s early campaign rallies in the Bay Area in July, 2007, I even arranged for Joe Banister, a former IRS enforcement agent and whistleblower living locally in San Jose to speak about the topic. A lot of the arguments seemed very convoluted to me, and for sure nothing seemed clear enough that you could take on the IRS and a heavy-handed judiciary and expect to come away unscathed.
Read More @ DollarVigilante.com




Deep Military Integration: Towards a North American Combined Military Force


Strengthening U.S.-Canada Security Interests in North America and Around the Globe
by Dana Gabriel, BeYourOwnLeader.Blogspot.com:
The U.S. and Canada recently signed several bilateral agreements that will further strengthen continental security and defense cooperation. Deeper military integration between both countries is part of efforts to establish a North American security perimeter and better address common global threats.

Following the recent Permanent Joint Board on Defense (PJBD) meeting which took place in Ottawa, the Commander of Canada Command, Lt.-Gen Walter Semianiw and the Commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and United States Northern Command (USNORTHCOM), Gen. Charles Jacoby, Jr. signed three military documents. The first was the Combined Defense Plan which a backgrounder described as a, “planning framework between Canada Command, its counterpart USNORTHCOM, and NORAD for enhanced defense cooperation between Canada and the U.S. should governments require each other’s assistance.” The second is the Information Sharing Memorandum of Understanding, “an arrangement between Canada Command, its counterpart USNORTHCOM and NORAD to identify and provide for ease of sharing information amongst the three organizations.” The Civil Assistance Plan, which was originally signed in 2008 and allows the armed forces of one nation to support the other during an emergency was also renewed for two years.

Read More @ BeYourOwnLeader.Blogspot.com





Paul Brodsky and Lee Quaintance: An adult Approach — Part I


by Chris Powell, GATA:
Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:
In their latest market letter, Paul Brodsky and Lee Quaintance of QB Asset Management in New York argue that investors shouldn’t fight the Federal Reserve but rather bet on it and other central banks. Brodsky and Quaintance write that indebted governments have ceded to banking systems, without conscience or public accountability, the power to inflate currencies. They write:
“If the global banking system has ultimate power over how global wealth is perceived, (as it does), and it is the only institution powerful enough to keep indebted governments in control of their societies (which it is), then the only reasonable strategy for an independent investor is to think like a Rothschild: Don’t fight the Fed — Bet on it.”
Read More @ GATA.org





NY Times Claims: “We the People” Loses Appeal With People Around the World


[Ed. Note: Well, given the Patriot Act, the John Warner Defense Authorization Act and NDAA s.1867, Mr. Liptak certainly got the first sentence in his article right.]
by Adam Liptak, NYTimes.com:
The Constitution has seen better days.
Sure, it is the nation’s founding document and sacred text. And it is the oldest written national constitution still in force anywhere in the world. But its influence is waning.
In 1987, on the Constitution’s bicentennial, Time magazine calculated that “of the 170 countries that exist today, more than 160 have written charters modeled directly or indirectly on the U.S. version.”
A quarter-century later, the picture looks very different. “The U.S. Constitution appears to be losing its appeal as a model for constitutional drafters elsewhere,” according to a new study by David S. Law of Washington University in St. Louis and Mila Versteeg of the University of Virginia.
Read More @ NYTimes.com




The Gold Standard Debate


Gingrich Tries To Grab Some Votes
by Pater Tenebrarum, Acting-Man.com:
 

Euro Area Credit Market Charts
It has turned out that Ron Paul’s critique of the Federal Reserve has caught on. Polls have revealed that voters (especially Republican voters) are actually partial to the idea of going back to a gold standard. This was revealed in a Rasmussen poll in early January, which characterized the gold standard debate as a ‘sleeper issue‘ that ‘could tip the scales of the race‘.
Phone interviews with 501 likely caucus-goers were conducted in Iowa in mid-November. The potential respondent was screened to ensure a. registration to vote in Iowa b. registration as a Republican and c. self-described as “definitely” or “probably” going to participate in the caucuses to select the Republican nominee for president. The survey has an overall margin of error of 4.4 points at the 95 percent confidence interval.
“A majority (57 percent) of those surveyed are favorable to the United States returning to a gold standard and over one-quarter is ‘very’ favorable to the idea,” reports pollster Erin Norman. “Only 17 percent are unfavorable to this idea, which equates to a better than three-to-one favorability ratio among likely Iowa Republican Caucus goers. These are remarkably high numbers given that the question contained no information about the gold standard specifically.”
Translated out of pollsterese? The gold standard drives votes both in the caucuses and primaries and in the general election.
Read More @ Acting-Man.com





The Fed is Engineering Barack Obama’s Re-Election Campaign


by Gary Dorsch, MarketOracle.co.uk:
Mitt Romney has just rolled up back to back victories in the Nevada and Florida primaries, and his path to the Republican nomination looks to be inevitable. Republicans are mostly basing their voting decisions upon opinion polls showing Romney has the best chance of defeating President Barack Obama in the Nov 6th presidential election. According to the latest Gallup poll, both Obama and Romney have equal support of 48% of the US-electorate, and if correct, more than a billion dollars worth of campaign and PAC ads will swamp the media outlets, in order to try an influence the decisions of less than 5% of undecided voters.
In his standard stump speech, Romney charges Obama with peddling for votes by spending taxpayer dollars in order to support his re-election. “Over the past three years Barack Obama has been replacing our merit-based society with an entitlement society,” Romney tells his supporters. Indeed, direct government payments to individuals shot up by almost $600-billion, a +32% increase, since the start of the Obama administration in 2009.
Read More @ MarketOracle.co.uk






Indian Investor Interest in Silver Surging


With the predicted 7% expansion in global demand in 2012 to an unprecedented 968 million ounces, investors in India are using silver as an inflation hedge hoping that demand will be sustained by global concerns.
by Shivom Seth, MineWeb.com:
MUMBAI – On the back of growing interest by small investors in India, Indian Commodity Exchange, which started operations in late 2009, is to soon introduce micro volumes of gold and silver contracts of up to 1 kilo each. The Exchange is a screen based on-line derivatives exchange for commodities. At the end of last year, it had recorded one of its highest volumes in physical delivery of bullion (gold and silver) on its platform.
“With the spurt in the demand of gold and silver in recent times, commodity exchange trading in these precious metals has surged in India, which is arguably the world’s largest bullion market. Delivery as a percentage of average open interest was 94.10% in gold, 62.02% in silver and 79.78% in gold of 100 grams,” said Nanikbhai Mehta at the exchange.
Read More @ MineWeb.com




Panic On Wall Street As Anti-Insider Trading Bill Spreads Wider Net Over Information Peddling


from Jesse’s CafĂ© AmĂ©ricain:
Senator Chuck Grassley put an clause back into the Senate’s anti-insider trader law that requires analysts who meet with Congressmen and their staffs to register their meetings.
The purpose of this clause is to bring transparency to the information peddling that represents a lucrative trade for hedge funds and banks that trade on insider information from the Congressmen themselves.
There is also large analyst trade in selling political information obtained privately to hedge funds. And rumour has it that quite a bit of that information spreads its way through the halls of the august Wall Street banks as well.
Wall Street apparently went into full court lobbying mode when they found out that Grassley had resubmitted this clause after they had successfully had it removed.
Read More @ JessesCrossRoadsCafe.Blogspot.com




Paul Could Force Fed Changes on GOP


by Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Joshua Zumbrun, Bloomberg.com:
Ron Paul, trailing in delegates needed for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, could be positioning himself to force his party to accept changes in the way the Federal Reserve operates.
The Texas congressman is attracting an expanding base of supporters passionate about his plainspoken message of sapping government power in favor of individual freedom. It’s not enough to make him his party’s standard bearer, say Republican strategists, yet if he follows through on a promise to remain in the race and collect delegates until the party’s convention in August, he could gain the clout needed to highlight his signature goal of curtailing the power of the central bank.
“He’s going to ask for a speaking role at the convention and try to have some influence in the party platform,” Republican strategist John Feehery said of Paul.
That would likely mean adding some tough anti-Fed language to the party’s formal agenda, such as mandating an audit of its monetary policy or sharply curtailing its power by eliminating its task of promoting employment so it focuses exclusively on price stability.
Read More @ Bloomberg.com




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