News on Precious Metals (2011)

News log

• (Audio) Jim Rickards predictions for 2012. Posted 12/31/2011. Several predicts. Predicts QE3 by May or so.
• $135 Billion Redeemed From US Equity Mutual Funds In 2011, 34 Of 35 Consecutive Weekly Outflows. Posted 12/29/2011. An all time record outflow for any year in which the S&P closed even nominally positive for the year.
• A Run On The Global Banking System—How Close Are We? Posted 12/27/2011. Discusses the implications of the MF Global bankruptcy scandal. “The MF Global scandal has made it clear that the integrity of the system has disappeared...As I write this, a lot of investors whom I know personally—who are sophisticated, wealthy, and not at all the paranoid type—are quietly pulling their money out of all brokerage firms, all banks, all equity firms. They are quietly trading out of their paper assets and going into the actual, physical asset. Note that they’re not trading into the asset—they’re simply exchanging their paper-asset for the real thing. Why? MF Global."
• (Video) Republic, Lost. Posted in Nov, 2011. Lawrence Lessig examines the way in which money links every issue that Americans — both liberal and conservative — care about. "Money buys results in Congress." That belief erodes trust. Low trust erodes participation.
• (YouTube) Silver Fundamentals Explained 3 - Office Series 9. Posted 12/29/2011. Fun video on what one billionaire could do to the price of silver.
• How Gold, Silver And Platinum Will Respond To ECB's Money Printing. Posted 12/22/2011. The author believes that Europe is going to see significantly better nominal growth levels than the assumptions gave it credit for. It is also going to see a lot of monetary inflation, at least over the next 3 years. The money supply in Europe will exponentially increase, on a scale that will exceed that of America and Britain. Gold and silver will inevitably rise in direct response to this monetary liquidity.
• The European Central Bank Loses Its Virginity. Posted 12/23/2011. Gonzalo Lira explains how the recent ECB bailout will cause SPG (Spain, Portugal, and Greece) to ultimately exit the EuroZone. This assumes, of course, that the money the banks receive from the ECB will be used to buy sovereign debt. Other commentators suggest that only a fraction of that money will be used for that purpose, and that the bulk will be used to shore up other bank debt obligations.
• The Fed vs The ECB - Presenting "The Correlation Of 2012" And What It Means For Gold. Posted 12/23/2011. In the last six months the ECB has printed more than the FED did in all of QE2. However, gold has not (yet) reacted to this reality. The expectation is that it will happen in 2012.
• (VIDEO) Outlook for Gold in 2012. Posted 12/21/2011. Investors are leveraged 100:1 on paper gold assets.
• Richard Russell issues a super-bearish warning. Posted 12/21/2011.
• Three dramatic housing trends closing out 2011. Posted 12/21/2011. – Impact of overstating home sales, foreclosure wave will return in 2012, and a very creative agent picture of a property.
• Mike Platt believes this time is significantly worse than 2008. Posted 12/21/2011. Hedge fund manager of $30 billion who made money in 2008. Platt is not a permabear by any means. He caught the rebound nicely in 2009 but now believes the prudent thing to do is completely avoid risk for the time being as better opportunities will come down the road for those who stay liquid.
• The Silver Rush at MF Global. Posted 12/19/2011. Also posted here.
• Money supply explosion will lead to accelerating inflation. Posted 12/17/2011. Singularity or the point where the gold price goes to theoretical infinity, is in February 2014, only 26 months away. Unless this long-term trend (since the 1900s) is somehow broken, gold is also telling us the dollar is heading for hyperinflation.
• Kyle Bass on the Fate of the World. Posted 12/16/2011. Must watch video.
• The Coming Collapse might be your Final Chance to Legally Buy Physical Gold this Decade. Posted 12/14/2011. This is a repeat of 2008.
• Commodity Unwind Continues As Global Liquidity Scramble Accelerates. Posted 12/14/2011. Suggests that the drop today (nearly 4% in gold and 8% in silver) ) was as a result of European banks running out of USA dollars. Having already dumped U.S. safe-haven securities, they are only left with gold and silver to dump.
• RIP Fed Dollar Swap Intervention: Central Bank Liquidity Injection Half Life Two Weeks. Posted 12/14/2011.
• Blood is in the Streets - Time to Review the Fundamentals of Precious Metals. Fundamentally nothing has changed. Review the facts.
• Central Bank Appetite And The Monetary Case For $10,000 Gold. Posted 12/12/2011. Latest estimates predict global central banks will purchase between 475-500 tons of gold in 2011. While the price of gold has followed the same upward path as money supply over the past 14 years, it hasn’t been able to keep pace with M2 growth. Based on M2 growth, gold would be greater than $5,000 per troy ounce if just half of global money supply were backed by gold.
• Realtors: We Overcounted Home Sales for Five Years. Posted December 13, 2011. Data on sales of previously owned U.S. homes from 2007 through October this year will be revised down next week because of double counting, indicating a much weaker housing market than previously thought.
• Headwinds for Housing. Posted December 12, 2011. Excellent article on housing prices over the last three decades. Predicts bottom in the 2013-2014 timeframe.
• 60 Minutes: Prosecuting Wall Street. Posted December 4, 2011. It's been three years since the financial crisis crippled the American economy, and much to the consternation of the general public and the demonstrators on Wall Street, there has not been a single prosecution of a high-ranking Wall Street executive or major financial firm even though fraud and financial misrepresentations played a significant role in the meltdown. We wanted to know why...
• China's September gold purchases leap sixfold. Posted December 1, 2011. The Chinese mainland imported about 140 tonnes of gold via Hong Kong in the 3rd quarter of 2011, more than the roughly 120 tonnes for all of 2010.
• Kyle Bass redux. Posted December 1, 2011. Hour-long interview full of information. Kyle sees a forest-fire crisis coming as early as end of December, 2011.
• Japan outlook severe. Personal savings of the Japanese population is forecast to be below zero by the middle of 2012. Their ability to fund themsleves internally is coming to an end. We believe that Japan would have a bond crisis of is own within the next two years without the current European debt crisis. The European debt crisis will simply act as an accelerant to the Japanese situation....We believe that this sequence of events is set to begin in the next few months (beginning with defaults in Europe).
• No Laws Were Broken. Posted November 28, 2011. The IMF is bailing out the EU at nearly $800 billion. Discusses the MF Global scandal (i.e. more than $1 billion of missing customer funds) and lack of prosecution.
• Why Silver For A Monetary Collapse? Part 1. Posted November 21, 2011. Includes gold-silver ratio and DOW-gold ratio charts.
• Not your grandfather’s Republican Party; President Obama and Mitt Romney are Nearly One and the Same! Posted November 25, 2011. Mish endorses Ron Paul and contrasts him to the other candidates. "As preposterous as it may have sounded at first glance, Obama and Romney are nearly One and the Same! Neither will tackle the budget deficit. Both will keep military spending intact....To be fair, Romney is more likely to start a devastating trade war with China (in fact he has guaranteed it), while president Obama is more likely to waste money on social programs and big labor....The simple fact of the matter is: it does not matter much if you vote for Mitt Romney or Barrack Obama. Both will destroy the country. Both support wars. Both will spend the country into the ground (but perhaps in different ways)."
• Currency Wars - Russia Officially Adds 19.5 Tonnes of Gold Reserves in October Alone. Posted November 25, 2011. It was the first time in recent years (since French President de Gaulle 35 years ago) that a head of state of one of the larger and more powerful G8 global players has expressly endorsed its central bank buying gold and probably the first time that a head of state has been photographed many times holding and admiring gold bullion bars.
• Imminent Threat. Posted November 16, 2011. Watching the farce of America’s political theater play out, it’s clear that this ticking time bomb will go off after Election Day 2012. As polarized as voters are, and as dismal the federal balance sheet is, there’s little chance of society keeping it together afterwards.
• European Debt To GDP Map: French Contagion. Posted November 15, 2011. This morning CNBC interviewed Blackrock's CEO Larry Fink, who said liquidity is vanishing everywhere in Europe. He sees a major crisis erupting in the markets in the next two weeks if major action if major action is not taken.
• European Debt Crisis: You Haven't Seen Anything Yet. Posted November 14, 2011. Though the daily market gyrations might indicate otherwise, realization is beginning to creep in that the European debt crisis and its effect on the U.S. will not take days, weeks or months to unwind—but years. How many years is up for debate, but a common range bandied about among investment experts is two to five.
  
• Ten Million Homes (19%) Face Foreclosure; 50% of Mortgages Underwater. Posted November 9, 2011. Nearly 20% of homeowners will, at some point during this crisis, fall into the delinquency/foreclosure process. That is a massive number. Out of 100 homes that may be in your neighborhood, on average, 20 of the homeowners will not be able to make their monthly mortgage payments.
• Chinese Silver Investment Going Parabolic. The volume in September of this year was more than six times that of the same period in 2010. Chinese silver trading is largely a paper market today. These paper silver contracts are redeemable in silver bars at the banks yet the banks do not have the silver. Curiously, the Chinese word for “Bank” is literally translated as “Silver House”.
• Four Facts That PROVE The EFSF Doesn’t Matter… At All. FACT #1: Europe’s entire banking system is leveraged at 25 to 1. FACT #2: European Financial Corporations are collectively sitting on debt equal to 148% of TOTAL EU GDP. FACT #3: European banks need to roll over between 15% and 50% of their total debt by the end of 2012. FACT #4: In order to meet current unfunded liabilities (pensions, healthcare, etc) without defaulting or cutting benefits, the average EU nation would need to have OVER 400% of its current GDP sitting in a bank account collecting interest....Europe’s ENTIRE banking system (with few exceptions) is insolvent. Numerous entire European COUNTRIES are insolvent. Even the more “rock solid” countries such as Germany (who is supposed to save Europe apparently) have REAL Debt to GDP ratios of over 200% and STILL HAVEN’T RECAPITALIZED THEIR BANKS....What happened in 2008 was literally just the warm up. The REAL DEAL is coming in the next 14 months. And it’s going to involve corporate, financial, and sovereign defaults.
• Chris Hedges: "This one could take them all down." Regarding Occupy Wall Street movement. What happens is in all of these movements ... the foot soldiers of the elite -- the blue uniformed police, the mechanisms of control -- finally don't want to impede the movement and at that point the power elite is left defenseless.
• Eric Sprott, Financial Sense NewsHour 19 Oct 2011. Discusses silver purchases being equal to gold in dollar amounts.
• America Will Surpass 100% Debt To GDP On Halloween. Posted October 19, 2011. As of today, total US Debt, is $14.942 trillion. Q2 GDP as was reported by the BEA three weeks ago, was $15.012 trillion. Tomorrow the Treasury will announce approximately $99 billion in 2, 5 and 7 Year bonds to be auctioned off October 25 through 27... with a very appropriate settlement date: October 31.
• James Turk's AIER speech. Presented in late July, 2011. James Turk outlines why gold should be considered "money" rather than an investment, and why the fiscal policies of governments and central banks all over the world are robbing paper currencies of their purchasing power.
• COMEX Commercial Silver Net Shorts Lowest in Eight Years. Posted Friday, October 7, 2011. Large traders the CFTC classes as “commercial” report lowest combined net short position for silver since April 1, 2003. COMEX Commercials reduce net short bets on silver by 60% past month as silver drops 28.5% - position suggests low confidence in lower silver prices.
• (September, 2011) News to expect in the coming weeks. Posted by Dr. Pippa Malmgren. Outlines the events to occur in Europe--i.e. Greece default, Germany leaves the Euro, Euro (and European banks) collapses and the US dollar rises, inevitable need for QE3. If huge liquidity is thrown at the problem then it will lean toward US Treasuries and hard assets. Gold, agricultural assets, and energy prices will rise.
• What’s Happening with Gold? Posted September 27, 2011.
• Gold & Silver Bubbles, Panics and Stink Bids. Posted September 26, 2011. Panic buying on this price drop.
• Is China Ready To Pull The Plug? Posted September 16, 2011. China is discreetly moving to dump U.S. debt.
• 'Unsinkable' Gold'. Posted August 29, 2011 by Jeff Neilson. "We are currently living through a period of unparallelled economic crisis....We are facing (simultaneously) the most extreme inflationary fears in history and the most extreme deflationary fears (i.e. a solvency crisis). And...there is strong risk that we will simultaneously experience the worst deflationary collapse in our history combined with hyperinflation....Gold is the only asset class capable of outperforming other asset classes in either an “inflationary” or “solvency” crisis."
• Denominators Matter! What the Price of Gold Tells Us About the Value of Other Assets. Posted July 22, 2011.
• Utah Coin Act. Posted June 23, 2011. Discussion on the ramifications of the act (i.e. making gold and silver legal tender for intrastate transactions) and other states considering it.
• (Video) Silver the greatest investment of the next 10 years. Posted April, 2011. David Morgan is the presenter.
• Debt Collapse - The Case For $20,000 Gold - Mike Maloney (FULL PRESENTATION). Posted August 16, 2011.
• No Way Out, Part 1. Posted August 9, 2011. By James Puplava. Basically, we are doomed.
• 10 Reasons Why Gold Is The Gut Reaction And Why Silver Is The Smart Decision. Posted August 9, 2011.
• Agriculture: The Next Big Bull Market. Posted August 5, 2011. Jim Rogers, "Agriculture prices are still, on a historic basis, extremely depressed, and in my view I'll probably make more money in agriculture than other things."
• (Video) Credit Constraints. Posted July 18, 2011. Sean Egan of Egan-Jones Rating Co. "The US debt to GDP ratio is on par with Portugal." Bond haircut will be about 70% for Ireland and Portugal and 90% for Greece.
• Numbers On The Debt. Posted July 27, 2011 by Karl Denninger. A must read. "The Federal Government borrows about 43 cents of every dollar it spends. This is, approximately, what you would be doing if you made $100,000 a year but spent about $175,000, each and every year for the last three years. Would you be able to get away with that?"
• Broke! 10 Facts About The Financial Condition Of American Families That Will Blow Your Mind. Posted July 25, 2011.
• (Video) Fiat Money Produces Endless Sea of Wars, Debt, Social Inequality, Economic Bubbles, Rampant Consumerism, Environmental Rape; Why Gold is the Answer.
• The Truth About Budgets. Posted July 18, 2011 by Karl Denninger. A must read.
• The Screaming Fundamentals For Owning Gold And Silver: Chris Martenson. Posted June 29, 2011.
• Chris Martenson developed the "The Crash Course" which explains the hyperinflationary event, among other important concepts.
• U.S. Debt Clock.
• Futures prices.
• Fiscal Crises and Imperial Collapses presented by Niall Ferguson on May 13, 2010.
• Fiscal Crises and Imperial Collapses transcript in PDF.
• GoldSilver.com Industry News.
• China plays Europe card. Speculation on how China is accumulating gold via support for the troubled Southern European countries (i.e. the PIGS). Dated January 26, 2011.
• China buys 47% of the World’s Gold. Posted March 10, 2011.
• China buying silver hand over fist. Posted March 21, 2011.
• China buying all the gold she could lay her hands on. Posted February 17, 2011.
• More silver than you imagined. Estimates 10 billion ounces of silver above ground and 510,000 metric tons of known silver reserves worldwide--i.e. silver that has been located and is currently being mined or is slated for future mining.
• Edwin Vieira Interview with James Turk. Mr. Vieira talks about how several states are contemplating legislation to allow gold and silver as alternative currencies.
• Obama's Stimulus is Proving as Disastrous as FDR's New Deal. Posted July 6, 2009. A correct reading of the disastrous New Deal which prolonged the economic recovery in the 1930's Great Depression.
• Silver mining will roughly peak in 2020. Posted November 29, 2010 by David Morgan.