by Alasdair Macleod, Gold Money:
On Thursday the European Central Bank’s Mario Draghi was moved to
defend the euro, after Spain’s government bond yields rose dramatically
through the 7% level. And when Valencia asked the central government for
a bailout, followed by indications that other cities and regions have
similar problems, it became clear that Spain is in deep trouble. We have
got used to the concept of too-big-to-fail; now we have
too-big-to-rescue.
We normally talk about Spain and also Italy in terms of government debt and budget deficits, forgetting they are only part of the problem. To these must be added regional and local governments, nationalised and subsidised industries, and off-balance sheet guarantees for other entities. Forget, for the moment, future health and welfare costs, which statistically dwarf everything: they are not the immediate problem. This still leaves us with rescues, without even considering commercial banks, amounting to perhaps between two and four times the headline government debt. People think Spain can be rescued, but when you take everything into account, including the prospect of a policy-induced slump from macro-economic mistakes, it is simply too big.
The failure to face up to financial reality is essentially political. Spain’s President of the Government, Mariano Rajoy, was elected with a clear majority last November, and has failed to cut spending. Instead of reducing the burden of the public sector on the economy, he has chosen to penalise the productive private sector through extra taxation. If anyone had an opportunity to face up to reality with an electoral mandate it was Rajoy, but he failed to do so either because he deemed it politically impossible because he is simply too weak.
Read More @ GoldMoney.com
On Thursday the European Central Bank’s Mario Draghi was moved to
defend the euro, after Spain’s government bond yields rose dramatically
through the 7% level. And when Valencia asked the central government for
a bailout, followed by indications that other cities and regions have
similar problems, it became clear that Spain is in deep trouble. We have
got used to the concept of too-big-to-fail; now we have
too-big-to-rescue.We normally talk about Spain and also Italy in terms of government debt and budget deficits, forgetting they are only part of the problem. To these must be added regional and local governments, nationalised and subsidised industries, and off-balance sheet guarantees for other entities. Forget, for the moment, future health and welfare costs, which statistically dwarf everything: they are not the immediate problem. This still leaves us with rescues, without even considering commercial banks, amounting to perhaps between two and four times the headline government debt. People think Spain can be rescued, but when you take everything into account, including the prospect of a policy-induced slump from macro-economic mistakes, it is simply too big.
The failure to face up to financial reality is essentially political. Spain’s President of the Government, Mariano Rajoy, was elected with a clear majority last November, and has failed to cut spending. Instead of reducing the burden of the public sector on the economy, he has chosen to penalise the productive private sector through extra taxation. If anyone had an opportunity to face up to reality with an electoral mandate it was Rajoy, but he failed to do so either because he deemed it politically impossible because he is simply too weak.
Read More @ GoldMoney.com
This Is What 670 Million People Without Power Look Like: Pictures From A Blacked Out India
First thing today we reported that India just suffered what may have been the biggest blackout in history, after half of the country's population of 1.2 billion, or just under 700 million was without power, as the electric grid of more than a dozen states suffered an epic collapse. Below we shares some pictures courtesy of Times of India giving some sense of what it means for two Americas worth of people to live without electricity indefinitely. Of note: the calm, peace and order despite the epic traffic jams and crowds. One wonders what would happen in the US if the entire country was without electrcity for even just one hour. Finally, one wonders what the impact to the Indian, Asian, and Global economy will be as a result of the complete halt that at least half of India - one of the world's core marginal economies - has ground to do.
Caution ahead of the Fed
Trader Dan at Trader Dan's Market Views - 45 minutes ago
With all the hype preceding this week's Fed meeting, not to mention the
usual circus atmosphere surrounding some potential action from the ECB, my
advice to both gold and silver traders is to be EXTREMELY CAUTIOUS. The
market has worked itself into a tizzy in my view as it salivates at the
further prospect of additional liquidity measures being undertaken by both
Central Banks.
When markets are in this state of mind, you will end up either being a HERO
or a ZERO. In other words, you are now in the precarious position of having
your fate determined by the roll of the dice. If you ge... more »
Video Interview: Smart Money
Admin at Jim Rogers Blog - 1 hour ago
Video interview, "Bailouts gives money to incompetent people"
*
*
*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.*
by Alistair Osborne, and Jamie Dunkley, The Telegraph:
Mr del Missier, the bank’s former chief operating officer who
resigned three weeks ago, is understood to have negotiated the deal with
Barclays’ outgoing chairman Marcus Agius in the days before he quit.
The pay-out looks certain to trigger another political storm over
bankers’ pay.Mr del Missier was one of Barclays’ highest-paid executives, receiving a salary and bonus package for 2011 worth £6.7m plus a further £10.8m from share awards from previous years.
He became co-head of the investment bank in January 2011, when former chief executive Bob Diamond was promoted to the top job, but emerged as a leading figure in the Libor rigging scandal.
Only last week Canadian Mr del Missier conceded to MPs on the Treasury select committee that he had told Barclays traders to lower the bank’s Libor submissions in the autumn of 2008.
That followed a controversial telephone call between Mr Diamond and Paul Tucker, the deputy governor of the Bank of England.
Read More @ Telegraph.co.uk
by Alf Field, Gold Switzerland:
There are no certainties in the investment universe. Investors are forced to weigh up the various risks and assess the probabilities involved before committing themselves to a course of action. Current Elliott Wave and technical studies suggest that the probabilities now favor a strong rise in the gold price.
It may be helpful to consider my personal assessment of the various probabilities at different points in the recent gold market correction. On 23 August 2011 when gold pushed above $1910 my guess was that there was a 90% probability of a severe correction. The target for the decline, as given in my keynote speech at the Sydney Gold Symposium in November, was circa $1480, the point at which the explosive extension in the gold price had started.
Extensions have a good record of retracing to the approximate point from which the extension began, in this case $1480. Market action during the decline is used to fine tune a more accurate end of the correction. Gold never got down to target of $1480, stopping not very far away at $1523 in late December 2011. At $1523 all the minor subdivisions suggested that there was a 75% probability that this was the low and that the market would move into a strong upward move, probably the most vigorous of the bull market. A lesser alternative considered was that $1523 might only be the A wave of a larger A-B-C correction.
Read More @ GoldSwitzerland.com
There are no certainties in the investment universe. Investors are forced to weigh up the various risks and assess the probabilities involved before committing themselves to a course of action. Current Elliott Wave and technical studies suggest that the probabilities now favor a strong rise in the gold price.
It may be helpful to consider my personal assessment of the various probabilities at different points in the recent gold market correction. On 23 August 2011 when gold pushed above $1910 my guess was that there was a 90% probability of a severe correction. The target for the decline, as given in my keynote speech at the Sydney Gold Symposium in November, was circa $1480, the point at which the explosive extension in the gold price had started.
Extensions have a good record of retracing to the approximate point from which the extension began, in this case $1480. Market action during the decline is used to fine tune a more accurate end of the correction. Gold never got down to target of $1480, stopping not very far away at $1523 in late December 2011. At $1523 all the minor subdivisions suggested that there was a 75% probability that this was the low and that the market would move into a strong upward move, probably the most vigorous of the bull market. A lesser alternative considered was that $1523 might only be the A wave of a larger A-B-C correction.
Read More @ GoldSwitzerland.com
What Happened To Gold?
Eric De Groot at Eric De Groot - 1 hour ago
What happened to gold? Europe happened. The invisible hand, desperately
short, has used the dollar strength to reduce those positions (chart 1).
This transfer from strong to weak hands will continue as long as psychology
and TIME permits. Please note that time is running out for 2012. Chart 1:
London P.M Fixed and the Commercial Traders COT Futures and Options Net
Long As A % of Open...
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content, and more! ]]
Aggressive Trading Versus Diversification
Admin at Marc Faber Blog - 2 hours ago
Basically there are two strategies: you can be an aggressive trader and try
to switch at the right times between asset classes or go for
diversification. I prefer diversification because I don’t feel confident
about getting the trading right. - *in Resource Investor*
*Marc Faber is an international investor known for his uncanny predictions
of the stock market and futures markets around the world.*GM's Channel Stuffing Goes To Germany: Is Europe's Largest Economy A Fraud?
We have long argued that auto manufacturers have been channel-stuffing (and subprime-lending) themselves back into a disaster and as such class-action lawsuits have begun. Recently we also pointed out the epidemic of dealer-inventory-stuffing in China (and again this morning the Chinese luxury car market's over-stuffing). So today's report from Reuters
that German auto manufacturers have been stuffing dealer channels just
like the rest of the world as Europe's largest car market is in
recession even if few outside of the industry would know it. "Essentially, the carmakers are deceiving their shareholders, since they make it look as if the vehicles were actually sold. They want to pull the wool over their eyes," as three in every ten new vehicles in Germany are sold not to customers, but to carmakers and their dealers - a type of automotive industry pump priming known as "self-registration". At
nearly half a million such registrations in the six months through
June, the total is greater than the entire new car market in Spain. Is Germany's economy really what it is reported to be given all this fake demand pull-forward - or is it a total fraud?
by Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, Silver Seek:
Making a case for higher silver prices can involve two ways of looking at its supply:(1) The total amount of silver ever mined.
(2) The total amount of silver available in investment grade bullion form.
The result of this supply analysis yields two different ratios for gold versus silver.
Stock to Flow Ratios for Gold Versus Silver
Interestingly, gold has a very high stock-to-flow ratio compared with silver. Gold’s stock or total volume ever produced is roughly 170,000 tonnes, while its yearly production or flow was reported at 2,586 tonnes in 2010 by the World Gold Council.
This puts gold’s stock to flow ratio at 65.7 years, while silver’s is less than one third of that. Other key commodities — like crude oil, copper, corn and wheat — have much lower ratios, as the following chart illustrates.
Reclaiming Gold is Easier Than Silver
It was not until the Industrial Revolution — and more specifically the 20th century — that silver became useful in a variety of products and processes in small and dispersed quantities that essentially consumes the metal. This is where gold and silver diverge, since gold is typically more easily reclaimed than silver.
Read More @ SilverSeek.com
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by Geoff Candy, MineWeb.com
The bottom for silver prices looks to have been reached recently says, David Morgan, but, in order for prices to start moving upwards, gold is going to have to lead the way.
Speaking to Mineweb.com’s Metals Weekly podcast, the author of The Morgan Report and a silver specialist, Morgan explained that the current consolidation phase is likely to continue for a while longer but added, “the sentiment right now is for safe haven status and gold holds a much higher place in investors mind than silver does, so to get silver moving again I think gold is going to have to lead us up out of this basic pattern in a rather significant way and I think then silver will probably follow it up.”
“More and more people are waking up to the fact that silver has every quality that gold has only it sells for a much cheaper price. As people get squeezed more and more but still want to protect what they have left, the tendency is in the latter stages of a major bull market, like we are experiencing, more and more money moves into the silver market rather than the gold market because gold is so expensive that most people by-pass it even though they might prefer to own gold.”
Read More @ MineWeb.com
by Frank Holmes, MineWeb.com
It was an exciting and educational week. I was in Vancouver at the
Agora Financial Investment Symposium speaking to hundreds of investors
who are eager to learn how to grow and protect their wealth. This year’s
theme, “Innovate or Die,” fit well with my presentation, as the
conference challenged attendees to adapt their investment strategies
just as empires and enterprises adjust to changing circumstances.
When I wasn’t behind the podium, I sat with the audience, soaking up new ideas from speakers, including Gloom Boom & Doom Editor Marc Faber, historian Niall Ferguson and Editor of Outstanding Investments Byron King, who surprised me and challenged my current way of thinking.
Back at the office, our analysts and portfolio managers continue their daily meetings as always to discuss and digest the mountains of research that cross our desks each day. We question what we read, analyze statistics and hypothesize on what we see happening across the global economy. As much as emotions and biases take a role in investing, our goal is to make decisions not based on groupthink that discourages creativity, but founded on a collective wisdom that encourages critical evaluation of the economy and markets.
Read More @ MineWeb.com
It was an exciting and educational week. I was in Vancouver at the
Agora Financial Investment Symposium speaking to hundreds of investors
who are eager to learn how to grow and protect their wealth. This year’s
theme, “Innovate or Die,” fit well with my presentation, as the
conference challenged attendees to adapt their investment strategies
just as empires and enterprises adjust to changing circumstances.When I wasn’t behind the podium, I sat with the audience, soaking up new ideas from speakers, including Gloom Boom & Doom Editor Marc Faber, historian Niall Ferguson and Editor of Outstanding Investments Byron King, who surprised me and challenged my current way of thinking.
Back at the office, our analysts and portfolio managers continue their daily meetings as always to discuss and digest the mountains of research that cross our desks each day. We question what we read, analyze statistics and hypothesize on what we see happening across the global economy. As much as emotions and biases take a role in investing, our goal is to make decisions not based on groupthink that discourages creativity, but founded on a collective wisdom that encourages critical evaluation of the economy and markets.
Read More @ MineWeb.com
from Zero Hedge:
While expectations of a Draghi rescuing us all from our bad selves
remain extreme – well he did promise! – it seems the market that one
would expect to be the most likely to benefit from his ‘Aid’ is
increasingly not Kool. The last two days have seen Italian and
Spanish sovereign bond spreads turn back down – even as stocks in those
countries keep up the good wealth-building work (with the front-end wider by around 30bps today alone). At the same time, financials have seen their credit risk widen back out
(especially seniors) and XOver (the European high-yield credit market)
did not exude the kind of equity ebullience that we are used to in a
pure risk-on, central-bankers-have-our-back period.
Read More @ Zero Hedge.com
While expectations of a Draghi rescuing us all from our bad selves
remain extreme – well he did promise! – it seems the market that one
would expect to be the most likely to benefit from his ‘Aid’ is
increasingly not Kool. The last two days have seen Italian and
Spanish sovereign bond spreads turn back down – even as stocks in those
countries keep up the good wealth-building work (with the front-end wider by around 30bps today alone). At the same time, financials have seen their credit risk widen back out
(especially seniors) and XOver (the European high-yield credit market)
did not exude the kind of equity ebullience that we are used to in a
pure risk-on, central-bankers-have-our-back period.Read More @ Zero Hedge.com
A man who plunged 100ft to his death at the Tate Modern art gallery in London was a senior bank manager with HSBC.
by Sam Marsden, The Telegraph:
Michael Foreman, 48, fell from a fifth-floor balcony in the members’
bar area of the gallery on the South Bank last Tuesday evening.
The banker, who lived in Grays, Essex, with his wife Janet, was reported missing the day before he died.
Horrified witnesses described seeing a man dressed in a suit without a tie plunge from the bar area shortly before the gallery, whose imposing building was once a power station, closed at 6pm. Police are not treating the incident as suspicious.
Mr Foreman was named today as an inquest into his death opened at Southwark Coroner’s Court.
The short hearing was told that he was a “senior bank manager with HSBC” and died from “multiple traumatic injuries”. He was formally identified by his wife.
He had worked for HSBC for 30 years and was based in head office in Canary Wharf in the business banking section.
Read More @ Telegraph.co.uk
by Sam Marsden, The Telegraph:
Michael Foreman, 48, fell from a fifth-floor balcony in the members’
bar area of the gallery on the South Bank last Tuesday evening.The banker, who lived in Grays, Essex, with his wife Janet, was reported missing the day before he died.
Horrified witnesses described seeing a man dressed in a suit without a tie plunge from the bar area shortly before the gallery, whose imposing building was once a power station, closed at 6pm. Police are not treating the incident as suspicious.
Mr Foreman was named today as an inquest into his death opened at Southwark Coroner’s Court.
The short hearing was told that he was a “senior bank manager with HSBC” and died from “multiple traumatic injuries”. He was formally identified by his wife.
He had worked for HSBC for 30 years and was based in head office in Canary Wharf in the business banking section.
Read More @ Telegraph.co.uk
by Agustino Fontevecchia, Forbes:
The dominoes seem to be falling into place for Mario Draghi and the
ECB to show what they’re made of. With the apparent blessing of Angela
Merkel and her French, Italian, and Spanish counterparts, Draghi is
preparing to announce a set of measures designed to push down stubbornly
high peripheral bond yields that are threatening to destroy the
monetary union.
As Draghi prepares his bazooka, which on the face of it will involve a resumption of the SMP bond-buying program coupled with EFSF/ESM purchases of Spanish and Italian bonds on primary markets, some are skeptical that the ECB is ready or even equipped to deliver what markets expect of it this week.
“Within our mandate, the ECB is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro. And believe me, it will be enough,” Draghi said last week, buoying markets and sticking his neck out by promising to deliver a long-lasting solution for the unsustainable rise of Spanish and Italian borrowing costs.
Read More @ Forbes.com
The dominoes seem to be falling into place for Mario Draghi and the
ECB to show what they’re made of. With the apparent blessing of Angela
Merkel and her French, Italian, and Spanish counterparts, Draghi is
preparing to announce a set of measures designed to push down stubbornly
high peripheral bond yields that are threatening to destroy the
monetary union.As Draghi prepares his bazooka, which on the face of it will involve a resumption of the SMP bond-buying program coupled with EFSF/ESM purchases of Spanish and Italian bonds on primary markets, some are skeptical that the ECB is ready or even equipped to deliver what markets expect of it this week.
“Within our mandate, the ECB is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro. And believe me, it will be enough,” Draghi said last week, buoying markets and sticking his neck out by promising to deliver a long-lasting solution for the unsustainable rise of Spanish and Italian borrowing costs.
Read More @ Forbes.com
by Michael B. Marois, Bloomberg:
California will borrow an estimated $10 billion from Wall Street the week of Aug. 13, money the most indebted U.S. state will use to pay its bills for the rest of the year, Treasurer Bill Lockyer said.
Lockyer’s office will first offer the revenue anticipation notes to individual investors for two days beginning Aug. 14, said his spokeman Tom Dresslar. The state will complete the sale Aug. 16 when institutions such as money-market funds can order.
State and local governments typically sell short-term notes to bolster cash flow until tax receipts increase later in the year. A $10 billion sale would be California’s largest since 2010. In September, the biggest state by population borrowed $5.4 billion and had to seek another $1 billion in February this year after tax collections fell short and spending exceeded expectations.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) and Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) will be joint senior managers and Los Angeles-based bond firm De La Rosa & Co. will co-manage the sale, Lockyer has said.
Read More @ Bloomberg
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California will borrow an estimated $10 billion from Wall Street the week of Aug. 13, money the most indebted U.S. state will use to pay its bills for the rest of the year, Treasurer Bill Lockyer said. Lockyer’s office will first offer the revenue anticipation notes to individual investors for two days beginning Aug. 14, said his spokeman Tom Dresslar. The state will complete the sale Aug. 16 when institutions such as money-market funds can order.
State and local governments typically sell short-term notes to bolster cash flow until tax receipts increase later in the year. A $10 billion sale would be California’s largest since 2010. In September, the biggest state by population borrowed $5.4 billion and had to seek another $1 billion in February this year after tax collections fell short and spending exceeded expectations.
JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) and Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) will be joint senior managers and Los Angeles-based bond firm De La Rosa & Co. will co-manage the sale, Lockyer has said.
Read More @ Bloomberg
By Martin Walker, UPI:
You know a crisis is about to burst open when U.S. Treasury Secretary
Timothy Geithner flies in unexpectedly to meet German Finance Minister
Wolfgang Schaeuble and European Central Bank President Mario Draghi.
And that’s just the start. Ahead of this week’s meeting of the ECB governing board there is a Latin summit in Madrid between the two men — Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti and his Spanish counterpart Mariano Rajoy — in the hottest seats.
“I don’t want to raise expectations but I must say that we have arrived at a decisive point,” said eurogroup President Jean-Claude Juncker. “The euro countries have arrived a point where we must make extremely clear with all available means that we are determined to ensure the financial stability of the currency union.”
“All available means” now joins Draghi’s “Whatever it takes” as key phrases propping up the skeptical markets. But the markets expect a very large rabbit to be conjured out of the ECB’s hat this week. We don’t know what it will look like but we do know what it won’t be.
Read More @ UPI.com
Today Michael Pento warned, “It is now becoming blatantly apparent
that the central banks of the developed world are becoming desperate in
their pursuit to fight deflation.” Pento also clarified, “… a central
bank can always create inflation when they so choose. All they need is a
firm commitment to destroy the value of the currency, and a government
that is compliant towards that goal.”
Pento also stated that key governments are on board with that agenda: “That situation is quickly coming into fruition in Japan, Europe and the United States.” Today Michael Pento, of Pento Portfolio Strategies, writes exclusively for King World News to put global readers ahead of the curve, once again, on what is unfolding as a result of the major, and unprecedented moves by central banks.
Here is Pento’s piece: “It is obvious to me that the world of economics has now fully entered the Twilight Zone. As evidence, last week European Central Bank Head Mario Draghi pledged to, ‘Do whatever it takes preserve the Euro. And believe me, it will be enough.’ In this upside down world of phony Keynesian Economics, apparently doing ‘whatever it takes to preserve the Euro’ now means promising to dilute the purchasing power of the currency into oblivion.”
Michael Pento continues @ KingWorldNews.com
You know a crisis is about to burst open when U.S. Treasury Secretary
Timothy Geithner flies in unexpectedly to meet German Finance Minister
Wolfgang Schaeuble and European Central Bank President Mario Draghi.And that’s just the start. Ahead of this week’s meeting of the ECB governing board there is a Latin summit in Madrid between the two men — Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti and his Spanish counterpart Mariano Rajoy — in the hottest seats.
“I don’t want to raise expectations but I must say that we have arrived at a decisive point,” said eurogroup President Jean-Claude Juncker. “The euro countries have arrived a point where we must make extremely clear with all available means that we are determined to ensure the financial stability of the currency union.”
“All available means” now joins Draghi’s “Whatever it takes” as key phrases propping up the skeptical markets. But the markets expect a very large rabbit to be conjured out of the ECB’s hat this week. We don’t know what it will look like but we do know what it won’t be.
Read More @ UPI.com
by Hans-Jürgen Schlamp, Spiegel International:
Jobs for your friends, contracts for your relatives, cash handouts for everyone: that’s how politics works in Sicily. Now the island is on the verge of bankruptcy. It’s an example of the underlying problem plaguing many parts of the southern European countries now struggling to contain the euro crisis.
Marcello Bartolotta, a surgeon from the Sicilian town of Messina, has
hit the jackpot. He has just been granted a seat in the regional
parliament as a replacement for a parliamentarian from his party who
recently died. The assembly will be dissolved in October ahead of
regional elections. That, though, is hardly a problem for Bartoletta.
After all, for the three or four remaining sessions he will attend until
then, he will get some €40,000 ($49,000), in addition to expenses.
That, though, is if Sicily doesn’t go bankrupt first. And there is a chance it may.
Bartolotta’s 89 fellow lawmakers and their 400 assistants have already been told that their July salaries won’t be paid out punctually. The “Onorevoli,” the “Honorables,” as Italian parliamentarians call themselves, are up in arms at the announcement and the Palazzo Reale, where the assembly has its seat, echoed with shouts of “We want our money!” Yet the parliamentarians themselves have contributed significantly to Sicily’s financial misery.
The problem isn’t just that they receive a monthly net salary of €10,000 to €15,000 — more than members of the national assembly in Rome get — without working terribly hard. The assembly rarely convenes and the turnout is usually quite low.
Read More @ Spiegel.de
Jobs for your friends, contracts for your relatives, cash handouts for everyone: that’s how politics works in Sicily. Now the island is on the verge of bankruptcy. It’s an example of the underlying problem plaguing many parts of the southern European countries now struggling to contain the euro crisis.
Marcello Bartolotta, a surgeon from the Sicilian town of Messina, has
hit the jackpot. He has just been granted a seat in the regional
parliament as a replacement for a parliamentarian from his party who
recently died. The assembly will be dissolved in October ahead of
regional elections. That, though, is hardly a problem for Bartoletta.
After all, for the three or four remaining sessions he will attend until
then, he will get some €40,000 ($49,000), in addition to expenses.That, though, is if Sicily doesn’t go bankrupt first. And there is a chance it may.
Bartolotta’s 89 fellow lawmakers and their 400 assistants have already been told that their July salaries won’t be paid out punctually. The “Onorevoli,” the “Honorables,” as Italian parliamentarians call themselves, are up in arms at the announcement and the Palazzo Reale, where the assembly has its seat, echoed with shouts of “We want our money!” Yet the parliamentarians themselves have contributed significantly to Sicily’s financial misery.
The problem isn’t just that they receive a monthly net salary of €10,000 to €15,000 — more than members of the national assembly in Rome get — without working terribly hard. The assembly rarely convenes and the turnout is usually quite low.
Read More @ Spiegel.de
from, Activist Post
Water, water, everywhere – Nor any drop to drink.
A
case of the government seeking money and bondage from rural residents
by purposely misconstruing an old law & bending definitions.
Gary Harrington had no idea that he was a water criminal under an obscure 1925 law until 2002 when state bureaucrats told him that his three reservoirs were illegal collection devices that were a crime against his community.
At first, Harrington complied and legally filed for three permits to keep the rainwater run-off within his 170-acre property, including one that had been on the property for 37 years. However, it appears that the Oregon government is adamantly against its citizens storing and using their own source of water. Although his permits were approved in 2003, the state court arbitrarily reversed their decision and was subsequently backed up by a county Circuit Court judge who ruled that he had illegally “withdrawn the water at issue from appropriation other than for the City of Medford.” (Source)
Even if the city of Medford did legitimately own all the water, Harrington has good standing when he points out that the law mentions only streams and tributaries, not water run-off formulated from the clouds.
Read More @ Activist Post
Water, water, everywhere – Nor any drop to drink.
A
case of the government seeking money and bondage from rural residents
by purposely misconstruing an old law & bending definitions.Gary Harrington had no idea that he was a water criminal under an obscure 1925 law until 2002 when state bureaucrats told him that his three reservoirs were illegal collection devices that were a crime against his community.
At first, Harrington complied and legally filed for three permits to keep the rainwater run-off within his 170-acre property, including one that had been on the property for 37 years. However, it appears that the Oregon government is adamantly against its citizens storing and using their own source of water. Although his permits were approved in 2003, the state court arbitrarily reversed their decision and was subsequently backed up by a county Circuit Court judge who ruled that he had illegally “withdrawn the water at issue from appropriation other than for the City of Medford.” (Source)
Even if the city of Medford did legitimately own all the water, Harrington has good standing when he points out that the law mentions only streams and tributaries, not water run-off formulated from the clouds.
Read More @ Activist Post
from Testosterone Pit.com:
Natural gas traded at $3.22 per million Btu (MMBtu) at the Henry Hub on Monday, a seven-month high, and a jump of 69% from its April low. Breathtaking when you think that a few months ago, the doom-and-gloomers, who’d been right for a very long time, were predicting chillingly that the price would hit zero by the fall, when storage would be full and excess production would have to be flared. But the pains for the industry are far from over.
Natural gas spot prices can spike locally due to transportation constrains and demand conditions. Earlier this year, while Japan paid $17/MMBtu, New York $12/MMBtu, and Boston $9/MMBtu, prices at the Henry Hub, which is in southern Louisiana, marched towards their decade low and dropped below $2/MMBtu [for that phenomenon, read.... The Natural Gas Massacre And The Price Spike].
Conversely, there are regions in the US where natural gas prices lag behind those at the Henry Hub. A salient example is the daily spot price at the Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP) Zone 4 Marcellus, a hub that serves part of the vast Marcellus formation that extends across much of Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York.
Read More @ TestosteronePit.com
President Obama has signed an executive order. He has set up a new
bureaucracy. This bureaucracy plans to make inner-city education so good
that whites will move back.
You remain skeptical? O, ye of little faith!
This executive order has this goal: to give black children top-flight public education, which means non-flight education. Blacks who have been able to get out of inner-city school districts have been fleeing for several decades. This is what the President is trying to stop.
There is a problem with his plan: public education. It has been declining visibly for approximately 100 years, give or take a decade. The decline has sped up over the last 50 years.
For blacks, the decline has been a disaster. The inner-city schools have been deliberately dumbed down as policy. Thomas Sowell has written on several occasions about the all-black high school in Washington, D.C.: Dunbar High School. From 1870 to 1955, it provided education as good as any white district’s program. (It was surely better than mine, 1955-59.) It taught Latin. It taught advanced courses in science. Its students went to college. Ralph Bunche was one of its graduates. It was deliberately dumbed down half a century ago as a matter of district policy.
Read More @ LewRockwell.com
Natural gas traded at $3.22 per million Btu (MMBtu) at the Henry Hub on Monday, a seven-month high, and a jump of 69% from its April low. Breathtaking when you think that a few months ago, the doom-and-gloomers, who’d been right for a very long time, were predicting chillingly that the price would hit zero by the fall, when storage would be full and excess production would have to be flared. But the pains for the industry are far from over.
Natural gas spot prices can spike locally due to transportation constrains and demand conditions. Earlier this year, while Japan paid $17/MMBtu, New York $12/MMBtu, and Boston $9/MMBtu, prices at the Henry Hub, which is in southern Louisiana, marched towards their decade low and dropped below $2/MMBtu [for that phenomenon, read.... The Natural Gas Massacre And The Price Spike].
Conversely, there are regions in the US where natural gas prices lag behind those at the Henry Hub. A salient example is the daily spot price at the Tennessee Gas Pipeline (TGP) Zone 4 Marcellus, a hub that serves part of the vast Marcellus formation that extends across much of Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York.
Read More @ TestosteronePit.com
by Gary North, Lew Rockwell:
President Obama has signed an executive order. He has set up a new
bureaucracy. This bureaucracy plans to make inner-city education so good
that whites will move back.You remain skeptical? O, ye of little faith!
This executive order has this goal: to give black children top-flight public education, which means non-flight education. Blacks who have been able to get out of inner-city school districts have been fleeing for several decades. This is what the President is trying to stop.
There is a problem with his plan: public education. It has been declining visibly for approximately 100 years, give or take a decade. The decline has sped up over the last 50 years.
For blacks, the decline has been a disaster. The inner-city schools have been deliberately dumbed down as policy. Thomas Sowell has written on several occasions about the all-black high school in Washington, D.C.: Dunbar High School. From 1870 to 1955, it provided education as good as any white district’s program. (It was surely better than mine, 1955-59.) It taught Latin. It taught advanced courses in science. Its students went to college. Ralph Bunche was one of its graduates. It was deliberately dumbed down half a century ago as a matter of district policy.
Read More @ LewRockwell.com
from KingWorldNews:
Today Michael Pento warned, “It is now becoming blatantly apparent
that the central banks of the developed world are becoming desperate in
their pursuit to fight deflation.” Pento also clarified, “… a central
bank can always create inflation when they so choose. All they need is a
firm commitment to destroy the value of the currency, and a government
that is compliant towards that goal.” Pento also stated that key governments are on board with that agenda: “That situation is quickly coming into fruition in Japan, Europe and the United States.” Today Michael Pento, of Pento Portfolio Strategies, writes exclusively for King World News to put global readers ahead of the curve, once again, on what is unfolding as a result of the major, and unprecedented moves by central banks.
Here is Pento’s piece: “It is obvious to me that the world of economics has now fully entered the Twilight Zone. As evidence, last week European Central Bank Head Mario Draghi pledged to, ‘Do whatever it takes preserve the Euro. And believe me, it will be enough.’ In this upside down world of phony Keynesian Economics, apparently doing ‘whatever it takes to preserve the Euro’ now means promising to dilute the purchasing power of the currency into oblivion.”
Michael Pento continues @ KingWorldNews.com
By Greg Canavan, Daily Reckoning.com.au:
Hot on the heels of our comments yesterday about the high cost of
doing just about anything and everything in Australia, today’s Australian tells us $200 billion worth of resource projects are at risk because of…high costs!
The article cites a report, due for release today, which shows resource company executives to be extremely bearish and wary about committing new investment dollars to planned projects.
Read More @ DailyReckoning.com.au
Hot on the heels of our comments yesterday about the high cost of
doing just about anything and everything in Australia, today’s Australian tells us $200 billion worth of resource projects are at risk because of…high costs!The article cites a report, due for release today, which shows resource company executives to be extremely bearish and wary about committing new investment dollars to planned projects.
‘The report comes after BHP Billiton signaled it would shelve its $30bn Olympic Dam project in South Australia; Shell said it might delay Australian projects until an overheated construction market cools; and Chevron warned of cost overruns at the nation’s biggest development the $43bn Gorgon LNG project in Western Australia.’
‘In all, almost $200bn worth of yet-to-be-sanctioned major projects are said by their operators or thought by analysts to be in doubt.’
‘On top of Olympic Dam, these include $24bn worth of Queensland thermal coal projects being planned by Xstrata, Gina Rinehart, Clive Palmer and Adani; $45bn on iron ore expansions by BHP, Rio Tinto and Fortescue; and $70bn of LNG projects under study by Woodside, Shell and PetroChina in Queensland and Western Australia.’
Read More @ DailyReckoning.com.au
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