Projected PIIGS Pillage: 3233.5 Tons Of Gold To Be Confiscated By Insolvent European Banks

While hardly discussed broadly in the mainstream media, the top news of the past 24 hours without doubt is that in addition to losing its fiscal sovereignty, and numerous other things, the Greek population is about to lose its gold in a perfectly legitimate fashion, following amendments to the country's constitution by unelected banker technocrats, who will make it legal for Greek creditors - read insolvent European banks - to plunder the Greek gold which at last check amounts to 111.6 tonnes according to the WGC. And so we come full circle to what the ultimate goal of banker intervention in the European periphery is - nothing short of full gold confiscation. So just how much gold will be pillaged by the banker oligarchy (it is amusing how many websites believe said gold is sacrosanct by regional national banks, and thus the EUR is such a stronger currency as it has all this 'gold backing' - hint: it doesn't, as all the gold is about to be transferred to non-extradition countries)? As the World Gold Council shows in its latest update, between all the PIIGS, who will with 100% certainty suffer the same fate as Greece (which has shown that unlike during World War 2, it is perfectly willing to turn over and do nothing) there is 3234 tonnes of gold to be plundered. And likely more as further constitutional amendments will likely make the confiscation of private gold the next big step. how much does this amount to? At today's prices this is just shy of $185 billion. Of course by the time the market grasps what is going on the spot price of the yellow metal will be far, far higher. Or, potentially far, far lower and totally fixed as the open gold market is eventually done away with entirely in a reversion to FDR gold confiscation and price fixing days.







US Troops Now in 4 African Countries to Fight LRA
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AF_AFRICA_LRA_FIGHT
http://www.redstate.com/streiff/2011/03/27/us-allies-with-al-qaeda-in-libya/

Nearly Half of All Americans Don't Pay Income Taxes
http://blog.heritage.org/2012/02/19/chart-of-the-week-nearly-half-of-all-amer...
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2010/09/congress-taxes-irs.html

Big Banksters Resigning
http://chasvoice.blogspot.com/2012/02/must-see-all-big-banksters-resign-check...

SCHOOL SUCKS: The American Way
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okPnDZ1Txlo

Notice of Hearing
http://www.orlytaitzesq.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Obama-election-challen...

Corruption in the Federal Air Marshal Service TSA Cover Up
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVpUWDSCSg8

Here's How Iran Could Launch Silver To $100
http://etfdailynews.com/2012/02/21/heres-how-iran-could-launch-silver-to-100-...

Checkmate For Japanese Sovereign Debt
http://seekingalpha.com/article/335741-checkmate-for-japanese-sovereign-debt

Why The U.S. Economy Could Go Haywire

Americans participating in a recent Gallup poll showed the highest level of confidence in an economic recovery in a year.  Sounds great, but you can’t ignore the nearly 13 million unemployed, the 46 million people on food stamps and the roughly 29% of the country’s homeowners whose mortgages are under water. They would find it hard to subscribe to the poll’s sunny conclusion. On the other hand, there’s no getting away from a bevy of seemingly increasingly favorable economic data, which, more recently, includes falling weekly jobless claims, four consecutive monthly gains in the leading economic indicators, somewhat perkier retail sales and a pickup in housing starts and business permits. Pounding home this cheerful view is the media’s growing drumbeat of increased economic vigor....Confused? How can you not be? 

Brent In Euros At All Time High

Yesterday we pointed out that the number of companies in Europe losing money jumped for the first time in 2 years, doubling from 5% to 10% (even as the matched metric for US peers continues to improve). Unfortunately, we can now say with absolutely certainty that this number will shortly soar courtesy of surging input costs which eat even further into what little is left of corporate profits, not to mention the demand destruction which comes from having to pay a price at the pump which would lead the average American to get a stroke on the spot. The culprit - Brent, whose price in euros has now risen to a new all time high, surpassing the peaks seen in 2008. In fact, EUR brent is now up 293% from its 2008 lows, putting the returns of the S&P and even gold to shame! And all along the market keeps on happily chugging higher completely oblivious of the tens of billions in corporate profits that new are eaten away courtesy of this latest and greatest side effect of massive central bank liquidity tsunamization. But hey - there's always Apple's latest gizmo which somehow is never quite "priced in" by the market.

Greeks Welcome Their New European Overlords... In German

The surreal keeps getting surrealer. One could probably think that after being forced to pay for the privilege of having a job, to fund European bank solvency out of their pocket as part of the Greek "bailout", and finally to hand over their gold, the Greeks would have at least put up a fight. One would be wrong: instead of doing anything else than the occasional store front looting by marauding gangs, what Greeks are doing instead... is lining up for German lessons. Well, if you can't beat them, may as well learn their language. Athens News reports: "Ruediger Bolz has 350 students coming through the doors of his German language institute in central Athens each day - 20 percent up on a year ago. The rush among Greeks to learn German may seem odd after the war of words between the two countries, with Greeks fuming at German accusations of financial mismanagement and some media playing on Nazi caricatures of Berlin politicians. Yet for Bolz, who has run the Goethe Institute for the last six years, there is no mystery: his pupils are happy to side-step politics and face up to harsh economic realities by acquiring new skills." So years of debt slavery induced misery may be in store, and the sheep are delighted to get the electric cattle prod, but at least they get to beg their employers to take their money with the proper umlaut usage.

A Record 216 Hedge Funds Own Apple: The World's Biggest Hedge Fund Hotel Gets Even Bigger

It is just getting plain silly: with a record 216 hedge funds holding Apple at the end of 2011, why does anyone pay the 2 and 20 any more? Just buy Apple. As a reminder, at the end of Q3 209 hedge funds owned Apple, at the end of Q2 it was 181, at the end of Q1 it was 173 and so on. The paterns is clear. What is also clear is that as Apple goes, so goes the entire hedge fund space. "30% of  fundamentally-driven hedge funds hold at least one share of AAPL. One out of five hedge funds has AAPL among its ten largest long positions. When among the top ten holdings, AAPL represents an average of 8% of total single-stock long equity exposure. In aggregate, hedge funds own only 4% of AAPL market cap with 1.6% average position across all funds."

Art Cashin On Gasoline Prices And The Economy

We have read, and written, all of this before (and speaking of, since 2012 is still a carbon copy of 2011, we could so easily just repost articles from February 2011, change the year, and nobody would notice - we could even save on robo-posting costs) but there is always something just so enjoyable in hearing the Chairman of the Fermentation Committee point out the glaringly obvious to the vacuum tubes in charge of a market which is now a 6-8 week lagging indicator to reality.

Greece’s Lenders Have The Right To Seize National Gold Reserves

“Ms. Katseli, an economist who was labor minister in the government of George Papandreou until she left in a cabinet reshuffle last June, was also upset that Greece’s lenders will have the right to seize the gold reserves in the Bank of Greece under the terms of the new deal.” The Reuters Global Gold Forum confirms that in the small print of the Greek “bailout” is a provision for the creditors to seize Greek national gold reserves. Reuters correspondents in Athens have not got confirmation that this is the case so they are, as ever, working hard to pin that down. Greece owns just some 100 tonnes of gold. According to IMF data, for some reason over the last few months Greece has bought and sold the odd 1,000 ounce lot of its gold bullion reserves. A Reuter’s correspondent notes that “these amounts are so tiny that it could well be a rounding issue, rather than holdings really rising or falling.” While many market participants would expect that Greece’s gold reserves would be on the table in the debt agreement, it is the somewhat covert and untransparent way that this is being done that is of concern to Greeks and to people who believe in the rule of law.

Initial Claims Print Unchanged From Last Week's Upward Revised 351K

Snooze of an update from the BLS, which reported that this week's initial claims printed at 351K, slightly better than expected at 355K, but offset by the now perpetual (thus statistically impossible) upward revision in prior week claims, which increased from 348K to 351K, so unchanged week over week. Next week this 351K will be revised to 354K so on top of expectations. That this is driven primarily by ongoing abnormally hot weather (remember the lamentations over last year's cold winter and how it was impacting data adversely - odd how we continue to hear nothing about the opposite phenomenon) is largely ignored. Instead what we will hear is how claims printed at the lowest in 4 years (chart 1). And yet we will hear nothing about how when one adds initial claims to continuing claims to extended benefits, we are just a little bit higher than 4 years ago (chart 2).

Albert Edwards Channels Conan - All Hope Must Be Crushed For A True Bull Market To Emerge

  While the bulk of tangential themes in Albert Edwards' latest letter to clients "The Ice Age only ends when the market loses hope: there is still too much hope" is in line with what we have been discussing recently: myopic markets focused on momentum not fundamentals ("It's amazing though how the market can get itself all bulled up and becomes convinced that we are the start of a self-sustaining recovery. And funnily enough there's nothing more likely to get investors bullish than a rising market"), short-termism ("One thing you can say for the market is that it has an extremely short memory"), and that so far 2012 is a carbon copy of 2011 ("One thing you can say for the market is that it has an extremely short memory. Let us not forget that the performance of the equity market so far this year is almost exactly the same as we saw at the start of 2011 (in fact the performance has been similar for the last 5 months"), his prevailing topic is one of hope. Or rather the lack thereof, and how it has to be totally and utterly crushed before there is any hope of a true bull market. And just to make sure there is no confusion, unlike that other flip flopper, Edwards makes it all too clear that he is as bearish as ever. Which only makes sense: regardless of what the market does, which merely shows that inflation, read liquidity, is appearing in the most unexpected of places (read Edwards' colleague Grice must read piece on why CPI is the worst indicator of asset price inflation when everyone goes CTRL+P), the reality is that had it not been for another $2 trillion liquidity injection in the past 4-6 months by global central banks, the floor would have fallen out of the market, and thus the global economy. In fact, how the hell can one be bullish when the only exponential chart out there is that of global central bank assets proving beyond a doubt that every risk indicator is fake???

German IFO Business Confidence Highest Since July, Sends EURUSD Briefly Over 1.33

The phenomenon of market and confidence reflexivity is quite well known to the US, where not one but two indices, the UMichigan and Conference Board, provide upward boosts to the market when the market is going up, which in turn boosts confidence even more, and so on in a closed loop well used by agents of the central planning bureaus, especially during economic slides, when the "economy" is nothing but the Russell 2000. Europe is no stranger to this, and early this morning despite Germany's recent economic data coming out nothing short of atrocious, Germany announced its business managers are quite confident, and more so than expected whatever that means, after the IFO Business Survey printed at 109.6 on expectations of 108.3 - the highest reading since July 2011. As a reminder, 9 days ago "The German Industrial Output Slides More Than Greek, Despite Favorable ZEW" - in other words, the propaganda machine is out in full force, desperate to break the linkage between Europe's recessionary economy, and the market which has soared over the past 4 months for one reason only - trillions in central bank liquidity. Alas, the bill has now come in in the form of record Brent in British pounds, fresh all time highs in energy prices, and WTI which if Goldman is right, will hit $120 this summer and send Obama's reelection chances down the toilet. Anyway, here is Goldman with a note on the German confidence index which briefly sent the EURUSD up 80 pips to a high of 1.3340, showing just how volatile the fulcrum security now is with 148K net shorts, since retracing most of the gains as apparently not even the market is that stupid to believe the confidence is more important than hard data following the EU's announcement that the Eurozone will officially see a GDP decline of -0.3% in 2012 vs previous expectations of +0.5% rise.

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