News on Precious Metals (2013 - January to June)

News log

• Family Matters: The Most and Least Expensive Cities to Run a Household in America. Posted 6/27/2013. Also see: Presenting Inflation...
• How long before investors sell other assets than gold to meet margin calls? Posted 6/30/2013.
• Russia and China building their gold reserves. Posted 6/30/2013.
• Eric Sprott - Stunning Indian Buying To Crush Silver Shorts. Posted 6/28/2013. But here is the ‘piece de resistance,’ they said (India) imported 720 tons in April (annualize 8,000 tons). In May it went to 900 tons, annualized call it 11,000 (tons). We’re going from 1,900 tons (of silver Indians were purchasing) to 11,000 tons, in a 25,000 ton market. That’s impossible. There’s not that amount of silver available for investment.
• “It is not inconceivable that by 2016 China will be importing nearly 2,000 tons of gold each year, which is 80 percent of global mine supply.”. Posted 6/27/2013. While India imported 1,900 tonnes of silver in 2012, in the first five months of 2013 alone, imports have touched 2,400 tonnes. According to industry estimates, silver imports during the January-March quarter stood at 760 tonnes. Imports shot up 720 tonnes in April alone, and in May, they further swelled by 920 tonnes.
• Rick Rule On Gold & Resources: “We’re Now Seeing Capitulation By Institutional Investors”. Posted 6/27/2013.
• Reality Repeal. Posted 6/24/2013. The Worse Things Get The Thicker The Propaganda.
• The World Is Now On The Edge Of Total Collapse. Posted 6/23/2013. he liquidity in China is under tremendous pressure. The shadow banking system is now at $2 trillion and 50% of debt is rolled over every 3 months, and 75% of China’s debt is rolled over every 3 to 6 months....Japan is even worse.
• Meet The Man In Charge Of America's Secret Cyber Army (In Which "Bonesaw" Makes A Mockery Of PRISM). Posted 6/23/2013.
• Gangster Banksters, World Bank Criminals, Military Suicide Epidemic, Brazil Protests. Posted 6/22/2013. Details world bank crimes and eventual consequences (starts around 8:00).
• (YouTube) Why is there volatility in precious metals now? June 2013. Posted 6/20/2013.
• What The Recent Surge In Rates Means For Your Home Purchasing Power. Posted 6/20/2013. It also means that a buyer who could previously afford a $506K house with a $2,000 monthly budget at an interest rate of 2.5% will be able to afford only $316K if and when the average 30 Year fixed hits 6.5%: a 40% drop in affordability based on just a 4% increase in interest rates!
• The Last Mystery of the Financial Crisis. Posted 6/20/2013. In incriminating e-mail after incriminating e-mail, executives and analysts from these companies are caught admitting their entire business model is crooked.
• Gold plunges again: unleashes perfect storm for the bears. Posted 6/20/2013. Thus, as we suggested in an article yesterday, the downwards movement in the gold price appears to be almost totally fixated on the fortunes of a single economy, that of the U.S., which is perhaps not as robust as its politicians and Central Bankers make out. The economic fortunes of the rest of the world are seemingly being ignored. What now remains to be seen is whether the Chinese will take up the slack in the gold market yet again, or whether some kind of purchasing fatigue will have set in given the continuing poor performance of precious metals prices. The other factor to watch is whether some of the major short positions in gold and silver on the COMEX now get unwound at the lower prices. For gold miners, developers and explorers the latest prices are little short of disastrous and we are thus certain to see some further consolidations and terminations.
• How Low Can It Go? Posted 6/20/2013. How much leverage is out there in the market today? About as much as was in 2007 -- maybe more. While you generally don't borrow with rollover risk but everyone else in the markets does -- governments, companies and traders. Worse, they use leverage when they borrow. They "gear up" to "earn profits." Now this is threatening to unwind en-masse, after it was gamed in the first place. How bad can it get? Very bad. No, it won't all happen in a day. But it will happen. Remember the cracks in 1987 -- and 2007 -- showed up several months before the leverage unwind went "boom." Don't get complacent.
• More To Come. Posted 6/20/2013. Yesterday was the first day of the reversal. There will be more days to come....the amount of leverage on the books is giant and is now going to get covered. There is not enough liquidity in the major Wall Street banks, any longer, to deal with the amount of securities that will be thrown at them and I expect the down cycle to get exacerbated by this very real issue. Now you may be wondering what to do next. The Fed has signaled its intentions very clearly. You should be taking profits, taking money off the table and building up your cash positions. How bad it is going to be is uncertain but BAD, with capital letters, in my estimation. Eventually Treasury yields will go back down because the Fed will be buying more bonds than the Treasury needs to issue but for now the "leverage issue" will overcome that reality. Mortgage rates will be heading higher, the Real Estate market is going to correct and the days of wine and roses are now behind us.
• US Treasury Gold – Is It There? Posted 6/17/2013.
• Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak Discusses The Constitution, NSA Spying and Torture. Posted 6/12/2013.
• Divergence between Silver's Price and Demand, through May 2013. Posted 6/5/2013. Now being referred to as "Drutter's Divergence". The price of Silver is dropping while the buying is accelerating - never seen before.
• Leeb - Massive Demand To Send Price Of Silver Skyrocketing. Posted 6/17/2013. I see these oil prices creeping up, despite all of this fracking, and it feels almost certain that the days for the US dollar are numbered. There is only one possible replacement and that has to be gold. That’s the bottom line. There is very little downside risk in this market, perhaps down to $1,320. When you look at the upside, you can multiply gold by ten and that’s probably the ultimate price for gold....Silver is going to have a role as a monetary metal, and it’s also going to continue to have a major, major role as an industrial metal. If gold is going to go up 10-fold (above $13,000), silver will go up at least 15-fold ($330). The silver bulls just need to hang in there and continue accumulating. As the price of gold soars, more and more people in China, India, and other parts of the world, will begin to pour money into physical silver. This will have the effect of creating major disruptions in supply.
• Who Said It: "This Administration Acts Like Violating Civil Liberties Is The Way To Enhance Our Security". Posted 6/16/2013. Barack Obama in 2006.
• On This Day in 1933. Posted 6/14/2013. You were considered a hoarder and a slacker if you still resisted turning over your gold to the government. From the New York Times, June 13, 1933 (article quoted). By January 1934, Roosevelt increased the dollar price of gold from $20.67 to $35, thus devaluing the dollar by 70 percent while increasing the value of gold that the government now owned.
• Treasury Sales By Foreigners Hit Record High In April. Posted 6/14/2013. in April, foreign investors, official and private, sold $54.5 billion. Why is this number of note? Because it is the biggest monthly sale of Treasurys by foreigners in the history of the data series.
• China Now A Safe Haven From The US Empire. Posted 6/12/2013.
• JPM Vault Gold Drops By 28.4% Overnight, Slides To Fresh Record Low As Withdrawals Accelerate. Posted 6/11/2013. At this pace, the world's biggest gold vault located below 1 CMP, and just next to the Fed's own gold vault, will be empty in about 1.5-2 months.
• 27 Edward Snowden Quotes About U.S. Government Spying That Should Send A Chill Up Your Spine. Posted 6/11/2013. He has given up his high paying job, his home, his girlfriend, his family, his future and his freedom just to expose the monolithic spy machinery that the U.S. government has been secretly building to the world. He says that he does not want to live in a world where there isn't any privacy.
• It's Not About Terrorism Folks. Posted 6/11/2013.
• Main Core: A List Of Millions Of Americans That Will Be Subject To Detention During Martial Law. Posted 6/11/2013.
• FOX NEWS: The State Against Citizens. Posted 6/10/2013.
• US Bank Gold Positions Explode By Highest Rate On Record; Short Positions Collapse. Posted 6/10/2013. While the mainstream financial media continues its attack on gold, US Banks & Large Traders are now joining the world’s top hedge funds in being shockingly long gold—and they are making that move incredibly quickly.
• SILVER COSTS: Much Higher Than Most Realize. Posted 6/10/2013. Total costs to mine silver are much higher than the industry is putting out in their financial statements. With the current low price of silver below $22, the majority of primary silver producers are losing a great deal of money. According to my calculations of my top 12 silver miners only ONE is making a little money.
• CFTC Gold and Silver Bank Participation Report - Ted Butler's Comments. Posted 6/9/2013. JPMorgan’s emergence as the big COMEX gold long changes the dynamic of the gold market.
• Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations. Posted 6/9/2013. The 29-year-old source behind the biggest intelligence leak in the NSA's history explains his motives, his uncertain future and why he never intended on hiding in the shadows
• (YouTube) Urgent Message From The Totalitarian State: Arrest Journalist Glenn Greenwald. Posted 6/9/2013. NSA surveillance leaks and Constitution rights.
• Everything Created Digitally Is Nearly Free - Including Money. Posted 6/6/2013.
• U.S. And Canadian Mint Sales: All Of Domestic Silver Supply Used Solely For Bullion. Posted 6/6/2013. If investor physical demand stays at current levels, all U.S. and Canadian silver mine production will go to solely satisfy domestic demand for government issued coins (and supply will still be 25 million ounces short). Industrial demand and alternative bullion suppliers will have no physical silver supply to use, and their silver needs will have to come from imports of silver. Additionally, low silver prices will cause many miners to cut production because their costs are above current silver spot prices, and so we also expect a drop in mine production. Finally, silver scrap supplies, which make up around 25% of silver supply, will definitely be impacted by low silver prices and we expect this source of supply to also drop.
• China’s gold demand – surmise and reality. Posted 6/5/2013. Since its 2009 reserve upgrade, China has produced close on 1200 tonnes of gold, and given it does not export its gold production – and all that is produced is sold to the state in some form or another – then it is not unreasonable to suggest that it has actually doubled its gold reserves over this period to nearer 2,000 tonnes.
• (YouTube) 06-01-13 Macro Analytics Transitioning to INNOVATION Driven w/ Charles Hugh Smith. Posted 6/5/2013.
• The “Zero Hour” Scenario. Posted 6/5/2013. “The mere combination of only five separate sources of demand,” Sprott writes in a recent white paper, “results in a 2,268-tonne net change in physical demand for gold over the past 12 years — meaning that there is roughly 2,268 tonnes of new annual demand today that didn’t exist 12 years ago.”
• RBI bans gold imports with bank credit. Posted 6/5/2013. In what traders termed a near panic reaction to the sliding Indian rupee, the RBI banned import of gold by domestic consumers through bank credit and has made overseas purchase of the precious metal a cash & carry business.
• (YouTube) The Nikkei Crash, NASDAQ, & TSX 06-04-2013. Posted 6/4/2013. Chart analysis suggesting a bear market is dead ahead for the world markets.
• The Pope joins the chorus in blaming free markets. Posted 6/4/2013. "While the income of a minority is increasing exponentially, that of the majority is crumbling. This imbalance results from ideologies which uphold the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation, and thus deny the right of control to States, which are themselves charged with providing for the common good."
• USTBond: Return to Sender. Posted 6/4/2013. Major broad deep channels are being constructed to redeem and discharge USTreasury Bonds. They will be returned to sender. The USFed will be put under tremendous strain to absorb and soak up the supply being dumped around the world in all these major channels.
• The Japanese Financial System Is Beginning To Spin Wildly Out Of Control. Posted 5/27/2013. Are we witnessing the beginning of a colossal financial meltdown by the third largest economy on the planet? The Bank of Japan is starting to lose control, and if Japan goes down hard the crisis could spread to Europe and North America very rapidly. From Kyle Bass: "What they're doing represents 70% of what the Fed is doing here with an economy 1/3 the size of ours"
• Bullion banks dump their gold and silver short positions ready for the coming rally in precious metal prices. Posted 6/3/2013. Bullion banks have massively scaled back their short positions in gold and silver during the recent price crash and are now well positioned to profit from a rally in precious metal prices, according to the latest TF Metals Report. Also see: Speechless Turd, Something Is Very Wrong, What Could Be Up! (May 31, 2013).
• Iraq Collapse Shows Bankruptcy of Interventionism. Posted 6/2/2013. By Ron Paul. May was Iraq’s deadliest month in nearly five years, with more than 1,000 dead – both civilians and security personnel – in a rash of bombings, shootings and other violence. As we read each day of new horrors in Iraq, it becomes more obvious that the US invasion delivered none of the promised peace or stability that proponents of the attack promised.
• China's Demand For Physical Quadruples Gold Premium. Posted 6/2/2013. As BloomMay was Iraq’s deadliest month in nearly five years, with more than 1,000 dead – both civilians and security personnel – in a rash of bombings, shootings and other violence. As we read each day of new horrors in Iraq, it becomes more obvious that the US invasion delivered none of the promised peace or stability that proponents of the attack promised.berg notes, even before the mid-April drop, China's gold imports jumped to a record in the first quarter as domestic demand (776 tons) outweighed domestic supply (403 tons).
• Federal Reserve Advisory Committee Worries About Inflation, "Unsustainable Bubble" In Stocks And Bonds. Posted 6/1/2013. Minutes of the Federal Advisory Council meeting held on May 17 were published Friday on the Fed's website and reveal concerns among its officials over the long-term ramifications of its quantitative easing policies.
• The Casino At The End Of The Universe. Posted 5/29/2013. Let me explain this to you. Between the actions of the world's central banks and the use of leverage we have built the biggest casino ever built in the history of the world. It is no longer possible to invest.
• "Look Ma - No Hands!" - So Much For The Housing Recovery. Posted 5/29/2013. Lumber is tanking hard. Yes, there is a slight seasonal component to the price of lumber, but based on all the media reports blaring from all directions, one would think that homebuilders can't build enough new homes to satisfy demand and thus the demand for lumber should be insatiable. But if that's the case, then why is the price of lumber falling like a rock?
• The Grand Finale: Here Is What Is About To Happen To You...An Economic Love Story, or Fifty Shades of Green? Posted 5/29/2013. It’s now obviously a currency crisis we face. But it just so happens, they have a solution ready to roll out. First: They will create a world body, or use one of their world bodies they’ve already created, to manage world currencies and the amount of those currencies in circulation. Second: any country that agrees to enter into, and abide by, an agreement to allow this “world body” to control the amount of that country’s, or Union’s, currency in circulation according to rules prescribed in the agreement will receive a huge discount in the amount of their sovereign debt owed. Third: all participating currencies of each country will from that point on be backed by a basket of commodities specific to that country or union. Fourth: all excess liquidity over and above the prescribed circulation limits in the agreement will be removed from the system. (In other words, currency devaluation.) Fifth: all of the resources and commodities used to back the currency of the country will be placed under the defacto control of the Central Bank that issues the currency
• Americans Deserve the IRS. Posted 5/28/2013. Since the 1791 ratification of our Constitution, until well into the 1920s, federal spending as a percentage of gross domestic product never exceeded 5 percent, except during war. Today federal spending is 25 percent of our GDP. State and local government spending is about 15 percent of the GDP. That means government spends more than 40 cents of each dollar we earn. If we add government's regulatory burden, which is simply a disguised form of taxation, the government take is more than 50 percent of what we produce.
• The Mother of All Painted-In Corners. Posted 5/25/2013. Japan has fired the first real shot in what future historians will record as the most significant global currency war since the 1930s and the first in a world dominated by true fiat money. Japan is the third-largest economy in the world. Its biggest banks are on a par with those of the US. It is a global power in trade and trade finance. Its currency has reserve status. It has two of the world’s six largest corporations and 71 of the largest 500, surpassed only by the US and comfortably ahead of China, with 46. Even with the rest of Asia's big companies combined with China's, the total barely surpasses Japan's (CNN). In short, when Japan embarks on a very risky fiscal and monetary strategy, it delivers a serious impact on the rest of the world. And doubly so because global growth is now driven by Asia.
• What If Stocks, Bonds and Housing All Go Down Together? Posted 5/24/2013. The belief that when the next crash comes, it will take down all three bubbles: stocks, bonds, and housing.
• Russia: The sleeping giant of gold producing countries. Posted 5/24/2013. As it stands today, the top seven global gold producers, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, are: 1. China (370 Metric Tonnes) 2. Australia (250 MT) 3. United States (230 MT) 4. Russia (205 MT) 5. South Africa (170 MT) 6. Peru (165 MT) 7. Canada (102 MT). Keep in mind too that in terms of known reserves Russia reports 5000 metric tonnes. It ranks third behind Australia (7400 MT) and South Africa (6000 MT). The United States reports 3000 MT.
  
• The Big Squeeze Continues in the Top Gold Miners. Posted 5/23/2013. Few realize that during the late 1800's the average ore grades of the world’s gold mines were 20-25 g/t on average — nearly 20 times larger than the present rate. Today the gold miners are left to basically mining gold dust.
• As Of This Moment Ben Bernanke Own 30.5% Of The US Treasury Market... And Will Own All By 2018. Posted 5/23/2013. Finally, the above means that with every passing week, the Fed's creeping takeover of the US bond market absorbs just under 0.3% of all TSY bonds outstanding: a pace which means the Fed will own 45% of all in 2014, 60% in 2015, 75% in 2016 and 90% or so by the end of 2017 (and ifthe US budget deficit is indeed contracting, these targets will be hit far sooner).
• Blockbuster in Gold. Posted 5/21/2013. It appears to me that JPMorgan and their ilk have bought absolutely massive quantities of gold and silver in many different markets. Unfortunately, much of that buying has come as a result of the deliberate and successful manipulation of price in order to force others to sell.
• Silver & Gold Bull Market Not Over Until the Fundamentals Say So - Mike Maloney. Posted 5/21/2013.
• $100 Silver, For Starters. Posted 5/20/2013.
• The Resident: How 47% of Congress Became Millionaires. Posted 5/13/2013.
• Incredibly Important Developments In Gold & Silver Markets. Posted 5/20/2013. Charts showing the gold and silver action of yesterday and today. It may be a sign that these metals have bottomed.
• Stocks Slide Following Permadove Chuck Evans' Attempt At Math. Posted 5/20/2013. Fed ownership across the 6y-30y portion Treasury curve is likely to reach about 50% by end of 2013 and an average of 65% by end of 2014. Given the current issuance schedule, we believe it is very likely that the Fed changes its purchase buckets through the next round of Treasury purchases. In particular, the Fed will begin to run out of issues in the 8y-10y bucket and will be forced to buy newly issued 10y notes should they choose to maintain the same distribution. That's right: there is a possibility the Fed would end up owning over two-thirds of all Treasurys with a maturity over 6 years by the end of 2014, especially now that the US suddenly needs to issue less primary debt than expected previously. Extrapolating further: 80% by 2015; 90%+ by 2016 and #Ref! by 2017 and onward.
• The True All-In Cost To Mine Gold: Complete 2012 Figures. Posted 4/17/2013. The first thing gold investors should note is that the true all-in costs to produce an ounce of gold (excluding write-downs) was $1287 for 2012, which is around a 10% increase in costs over 2011. The true gold cost of $1287 is much higher than the reported "cash costs" (under $1000 for most miners) and gives gold miners very limited profit at current gold prices.
• Systemic crisis 2013: with record stock exchange highs, the planet’s imminent plunge into recession. Posted 5/16/2013. Despite a feeling of relative calm given by both the media and the American and Japanese financial markets going from record to record, the world economy is slowing down badly and a widespread recession is looming. The various players are fully aware of it and, in the face of the challenges of an imminent collapse, countries or regions are putting various strategies in place to try and limit the consequences. Whilst some seem dictated by desperation or last chance solutions, others on the contrary bear witness to a real adaptation to the world’s current changes. And it’s no surprise that, in the first category, we find the “powers of the world before” which no longer have any real options.
• Silver and the Dow. Posted 5/16/2013. The two most significant nominal peaks of the Dow were in 1929 and 1973. Silver made a significant peak in 1935, about six years after the Dow’s major peak in 1929. Again, in 1980, silver made a significant peak, about seven years after the Dow’s major peak in 1973.
• Gold Bullion: 4 Fundamental Facts. Posted 5/15/2013. (1) You can't print more gold. (2) Gold is viewed as a currency by central bankers. (3) A lack of love from the Love Trade is affecting fundamentals. (4) Corrections happen, but have historically offered buying opportunities.
• Gold & What I Know for Certain. Posted 5/16/2013. A currency collapse is like a bank run – everyone scrambles to remove his/her wealth from the currency (or the bank) due to a loss of confidence. In fractional reserve banking systems, bank runs are inevitable. Even though they may last for many decades, unbacked paper currencies inevitably devalue and eventually collapse.
• Soros Reports Over $239mm In Gold Positions, Buys $25mm In Call Options On Juniors. Posted 5/16/2013. In a 13-F release issued by the SEC after market close yesterday, it was reported that Soros Fund Management LLC, founded and chaired by billionaire financier George Soros, significantly increased its gold related holdings, most notably, through the purchase of over $25 million dollars worth of call options on the GDXJ Junior Gold Miners index.
• Market Not Finding Enough Metal To Meet Future Demand - Kitco News. Posted 5/15/2013. Precious metal junior miners are capitulating. Cash flow remains the biggest problem. In fact, Cook said that there are 700 mining companies that have $200,000 or less, and that isn't enough capital to make it through the year.
• What do Zimbabwe and Weimar Germany have to do with the U.S. Dollar? Posted 5/10/2013. Porter makes it very clear that gold and silver are on the cusp of an explosion in price and it absolutely will happen. It will happen so fast that you will not be able to jump aboard after the fact. Either you own it now, before the fireworks begin, or it will be too late. And it’s not just about making a killing in gold and silver – when it happens, the dollar-based investments that most Americans have will suffer greatly. Gold will have shown the fiat currency system to be a fraud. The fractional reserve system in currencies and in gold and silver will be exposed.
• A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Next Bull Market. Posted 5/10/2013. If we consider average P/E's, it's clear the SPX is extended far above what can be considered historical fair valuations.
• Minding the reality gap. Posted March, 2013. Officially, unemployment in the US is declining. It’s fallen from a high of 9.1% a couple years ago, to 7.8% in recent months. This would be good news, if the official unemployment rate measured unemployment, in the everyday sense of the word. It doesn’t. The technical definition of “U3? unemployment, the most commonly reported figure, excludes people who’ve given up looking for work, those who’ve retired early due to market conditions, and workers so part time they clock in just one hour per week.
• Why There May Be a Lot Less Gold than We Realize. Posted 5/8/2013. By Chris Martenson, posted on Casey Research.
• The Truth About The Gold Being Drained From GLD. Posted 5/8/2013. So in connecting all the dots, there is no question in my mind that the big price smashing of gold in mid-April was an operation designed to shake loose enough 400 oz. gold bars out of GLD in order to satisfy the enormous delivery demands coming from Asia, India and even within Europe. GLD is the only possible source of above-ground 400 oz. gold bars that could be used to satisfy this enormous demand for physically deliverable bars.
  
  At some point, and probably sooner than most people are willing to believe, this physical demand is going to force an upward "explosion" of the paper derivatives being used to hold down the spot price right now. In 30 years of studying and trading the financial markets, I have never seen contrarian indicators for any market sector flashing as bullishly as they are for gold and silver, which further confirms my view that the metals have bottomed and are getting ready to give those of us who held on the ride of a lifetime.
  
  
• Are We On The Verge Of Witnessing The Death Of The Paper Gold Scam? Posted 5/8/2013. The legal claims on physical gold far exceed the amount of physical gold that the banks actually have by a very, very wide margin. And right now the bankers are scared out of their wits because their warehouses are being drained of physical gold at a frightening rate.
• The US Goes Suicidal: How to Save Money and Lives. Posted 5/8/2013. More people now die of suicide than in car accidents, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which published the findings in Friday's issue of its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. In 2010, there were 33,687 deaths from motor vehicle crashes and 38,364 suicides.
• Creating the Stasi American. Posted 5/7/2013. The phenomenon is not evidence of a “flaw in the German character”; it points to a tendency within human nature itself. Gellately found informers were not primarily motivated by patriotism, fear, or an ideological commitment to Hitler. Rather they were motivated by greed with businessmen reporting on partners to acquire the full share of a company. The envious turned in a richer neighbor. The spurned informed on ex-lovers and romantic rivals. The petty revenged their small disputes by calling in the Gestapo. And, then, there were those who basked in the self-importance of being listened to by authorities.
  
  When encouraged and rewarded by authority to act viciously, when their vile behavior is protected from consequences, many people will become the worst versions of themselves. They will become expressions of statism. By contrast, if viciousness is discouraged and punished by a civil society, the same people may never harm another human being. Human interaction is often defined by a framework of financial and psychological incentives.
  
  Operation TIPS and CPAT will create the worst possible version of an American – an American who is indistinguishable from the German woman who turned in an acquaintance for being Jewish. Like the Nazi informer, the American may blithely deny the viciousness of his act by saying “that is not me.” Of course, it is. At least, that is who the average American could become when handed the power of the state to use anonymously and with no consequences against anyone he dislikes. He is the American that the ruling elite wish to create. [And he is the American all your friends and neighbors will become. The Stasi America is coming. Get out of its way while you still can.-Ed.]
  
  
• DHS Whistleblower Censored from 60 minutes. Posted 5/2/2013.
• Where We Are, Why Gold Was Bombed, And Why TA Is A Waste Of Time. Posted 5/6/2013. (Includes links to three videos.) The not-anticipated result of the take down on paper gold was to wake a sleeping elephant of physical demand from other every corner of the globe. The opinion of the operators is that if the gold banks can keep pressure up on paper gold the huge demand for physical will fizzle. The world outside of North America has recent memories of monetary situations exactly the same as now. They know that paper is in its final stage and gold is in a major ascendancy. Physical demand will remain strong thereby overcoming paper gold and forcing paper gold exchanges to change their methods of delivery, clearly restricting paper to a secondary role and making its use to manipulate gold redundant.
• On The 3-Week Anniversary Of The Precious Metals Bear Raid. Posted 5/6/2013. Charts showing that the paper gold unwind continues. That is, GLD holdings continue to drop precipitously even while the price of the ETF recovers from the drop.
• Antal Fekete: Gold Backwardation and the Collapse of the Tacoma Bridge. Posted 5/6/2013. Keynes, who studied Gesell's Freigeld thoroughly, arrived at the conclusion that gentle inflation was superior to Freigeld. Friedman chimed in suggesting that the rise of prices can be checked through fixing the rate of increase in the stock of money. They were all wrong. They all promoted the exponential explosion of debt. Gold is indispensible as the only ultimate extinguisher of debt. It weeds out unwanted and toxic debt automatically. It is the flywheel regulator of the economy: it keeps the velocity of money at its optimum.
  
  If breakdown occurs during the phase when the rate of interest is falling and money flows from the commodity to the bond market, then we have what I call hyperdeflation. That is what we are apparently having right now. It started over thirty years ago in the early 1980s. When in January 1980 interest rates failed to break out on the upside (as appeared likely at the time, with the gold price hitting $875), the system went into the mode of declining interest with such a force that put the Fed out of control. For the past three decades interest rates have been falling relentlessly. Of course, the Fed would like to have us believe that this is the result of deliberate monetary policy. I suggest it to you that it's not. It is runaway resonance in action – on the side of interest rates and the velocity of money falling to zero. Fall they do inexorably. It is hyperdeflation. The Fed is desperately trying to fight it, but all is in vain. We are on a roller-coaster ride plunging the world into zero-velocity of money and into barter.
  
  
• The Great Gold Redemption. Posted 5/3/2013.
• Gresham's Law Proves Gold And Silver Are Remarkably Undervalued. Posted 5/2/2013. Gresham's law is an economic principle that states, "when a government overvalues one type of money and undervalues another, the undervalued money will leave the country or disappear from circulation into hoards, while the overvalued money will flood into circulation." It is commonly stated as: "Bad money drives out good" - Gresham's Law. Doesn't that sound like the situation in the United States and globally? Paper money is being printed by the trillions and the recent price takedown of gold/silver unleashed an unexpected frenzied scramble for physical gold and silver that the buyers will tuck away, out of the sight and from the grips of any government.
• Desperately Seeking $11.2 Trillion In Collateral, Or How "Modern Money" Really Works. Posted 5/1/2013.
• The True Cost To Mine Silver - Complete 2012 Figures. Posted 3/27/2013. When taxes are normalized..., production costs rise to $24.70 per ounce which would support our estimates that 2013 will see more rising costs for the silver industry....According to the 2012 numbers, the $24 range would provide the average silver producer no margin of profit, and if cost pressures continue to grow, this may be even higher (remember fourth quarter costs were close to $25 per ounce after normalizing taxes). Of course not all silver miners would be unprofitable and some miners may continue to churn out silver even with zero profit margins, but it would be a situation that would be unsustainable.
• The beginning of the silver age. Posted 5/1/2013. Generally, wave III will run faster and gain much more compared with wave I. It will probably take gold to $10,050 to $16,000 per ounce in circa 5 to 8 years or even faster. Meanwhile, silver will go to $500 to $1,100 per ounce then.
• A Bear Market in GoLD. Posted 5/1/2013. On 1/2/13, the GLD showed an alleged "inventory" of 1,349.92 metric tonnes of gold. As of this evening, the GLD "inventory" is listed as 1,078.54 metric tonnes following another drawdown today, this time for 2.10 tonnes. So, year-to-date, the GLD "inventory" is now down 20.1%.
• Bill Gross: "There Will Be Haircuts". Posted 5/1/2013. Quick Read: (1) Central banks and policymakers are acting like barbers. They haircut your investments. (2) Negative real interest rates, inflation, currency devaluation, capital controls and outright default are the barber’s scissors. (3) Gradually reduce duration, risk positions and “carry” as the year proceeds.
• Financial Treachery & Harsh Consequences. Posted 4/30/2013. Gold and USTBonds aint a market. Their so-called official trading arenas are empty rooms with USGovt and USFed devices filling the empty space, creating a phony price. The false Gold price has no real supply. The false Bond price has no real demand. The claimed price is not where Supply meets Demand to clear the table on the market. Therefore the claimed price is not the real price. Neither Gold more the USTBonds are a real market.
• Special Report - How To Avoid Fake Silver & Counterfeit Gold Products. Posted 4/30/2013.
• The 5 Stages of Economic Collapse: Financial, Commercial, Political, Social & Cultural – Where is the U.S. Now?. Posted 4/25/2013. I think that the stage 1 (financial) and stage 2 (political) collapses will compress into a single chaotic episode. Commercial collapse will not be far behind, because global commerce is dependent on global finance, and once international credit locks up the tankers and the container ships won’t sail. Shortly thereafter it will be lights out.
• The World Is Hoarding Alternative Money As Almost All Major Countries Are Going Through The Classic Stages of Economic Collapse. Posted 4/30/2013. Argentina is going through the classic stages of economic collapse. The government seized all pensions. They are destroying everything that gives the people incentive to be a society that emerges from the cooperation of everyone. When government turns against its own people, even as the USA is currently doing, you end up with deflation insofar as the economy collapses and wages are not available, while hoarding emerges as does barter.
• Buy Gold Now. Posted 4/29/2013. What we learned from these big players is that no one was a net seller. There was across-the-board purchasing, and on significantly increased volumes. We heard more than once that "We've never seen anything like this." And that includes the 2008-2009 period.
• The Global "Fractional" Paper Bullion Market Is Collapsing. Posted 4/29/2013. He said right now those same families are walking into the big banks like JPM and demanding delivery of their bars or threatening to take their $100's of millions in investment portfolios to competitors. His wording was "these people are putting a gun to the heads of private banks and demanding their gold." At some point there will be an even bigger "run on the bank" by those looking for delivery of the physical gold/silver that they have been "assured" is sitting in their "trusty" bank custodian vault. At some point there will be a complete collapse of trust in the paper monetary system and the price of gold/silver will really go parabolic...
• Investor Beware - Numismatic Collector Coins. Posted 1/10/2011.
• IF. Posted 4/28/2013.
• India Flexes Its Nuclear Muscles – While We Fixate on North Korea and Iran. Posted 4/26/2013. If the CoT is true and accurate...and I have always thought it to be...then there can be no doubt that we are on the verge of major fiat-conversion price rallies in both metals, perhaps even something more dramatic.
• JPMorgan Accounts For 99.3% Of The COMEX Gold Sales In The Last Three Months. Posted 4/26/2013.
• Comex Physical Drain Accelerates—With Over $7.8B In Gold Disappearing From All Depositories. Posted 4/24/2013.
• The USD Reserve Exodus Continues - Australia Diversifies Reserves Into China. Posted 4/24/2013.
• "Panic" For Physical Gold Spreads To UK Where Royal Mint Sales Of Gold Coins Triple. Posted 4/24/2013.
• Robber Barons Are Stealing Pensions, Bank Deposits and Democracy. Posted 4/24/2013. At a certain point, when the Japanese, US and eurozone stimulus pumps have so debased their currencies that further pumping would prove futile, gold, silver, platinum and possibly diamonds will again be regarded as safe haven assets. Attempts by central banks and high-stakes speculators to manipulate markets may produce temporary violent price fluctuations, but in the long term they will fail to drive down prices or tarnish their safe haven luster.
• Sinclair - Full-Blown Panic As People Ask “Where Is The Gold?” Posted 4/24/2013.
• Are JPM’s Alleged Silver Shorts Already in the Money?. Posted 4/23/2013. Author suggests a trading range of $22 to $25 over the next two months or so, until JPM covers a huge chunk of its short position.
• Silver American Eagle planchet suppliers elusive. Posted 4/22/2013. The United States Mint has the production capacity to strike between 50 million and 60 million American Eagle silver bullion coins annually to meet demand, but ongoing inability to secure sufficient planchets stifles full use of that capacity.
• The US is moving to a gold standard. Posted 4/22/2013. There are now 20 US states that either have successfully passed bills to allow gold and silver to be used as legal tender, or have been exploring it as an option. The article has an up to date status of each of the states.
• Committed to Ruining the Economy. Posted 4/20/2013. As we remarked in these pages a couple of Weekenders ago, the Fed, the BoE and the ECB are providing a massive “jolt” of freshly inked currencies to their respective economies, hoping to prop up optimistic asset prices. The rate of expansion is, says Bill Bonner, “unprecedented in world history.” We’re talking, of course, about ZIRP, QEI, QEII, Operation Twist (OP) and other such dubious, acronymic concoctions. All the tools’ tools, in other words. But wait! Doesn’t EZ money policy lead to rank malinvestment and moral hazard…the exact same recipe that baked the world economy into such a sordid mess the last time? Well, yes.
  
  As CounterPunch’s Mike Whitney explains: Investors have boosted their borrowing to near-record levels to load up on stocks. The last time that margin debt was this high was just before the bubble burst in 2007. In January, New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) margin debt tipped $366 billion, just shy of the 2007 peak of $380 billion. The Fed’s zero rates and $85 billion per month bond buying program (QE) have sparked the same irrational exuberance that preceded the Crash of ’08. Investors are piling on the leverage because they feel confident that Fed chairman Ben Bernanke will not allow markets to fall too sharply.
  
  Reports CNBC: “The IMF was clear in its global financial stability report that it did not want to see an end to the extraordinarily loose monetary policy being implemented across rich countries.”
  
  
• Gold, Silver And Bird Farmers. Posted 4/19/2013. As we learned from the recent Cyprus debacle—political and monetary authorities feel legally entitled and morally justified to confiscate your savings when they want the funds to cover government bills. Meanwhile, never forget that central banks everywhere continue to print money and monetize government debt. The story of the Weimar Republic sort of speaks for itself.
• Fed Governor Stein Warns When A TBTF Bank Fails, Depositors Will Be Cyprus'ed. Posted 4/19/2013. Quote: Perhaps more to the point for TBTF, if a SIFI (Systemically Important Financial Institution) does fail I have little doubt that private investors will in fact bear the losses--even if this leads to an outcome that is messier and more costly to society than we would ideally like. Dodd-Frank is very clear in saying that the Federal Reserve and other regulators cannot use their emergency authorities to bail out an individual failing institution. And as a member of the Board, I am committed to following both the letter and the spirit of the law. See the Governor Jeremy C. Stein speech here: Regulating Large Financial Institutions, April 17, 2013.
• BOSTON BOMBING UPDATE: THE BACKPACK MYSTERY-CONSPIRACY!!! Posted 4/20/2013. Several "other" men with black backpacks during the Boston Marathon that day. Who were they?
• BATTLEFIELD USA: De Facto State of Martial Law Has Been Declared In Boston *Pics From the War Zone*. Posted 4/19/2013.
• 10 Signs The Takedown Of Paper Gold Has Unleashed An Unprecedented Global Run On Physical Gold And Silver. Posted 4/18/2013. The crash of the price of paper gold on Monday has unleashed an unprecedented global frenzy to buy physical gold and silver. All over the planet, people are recognizing that this is a unique opportunity to be able to acquire large amounts of gold and silver at a bargain price. So precious metals dealers now find themselves being overwhelmed with orders in the United States, in Canada, in Europe and over in Asia.
• Pento - Gold Reveals Global Markets On Thin Ice. Posted 4/18/2013. To understand the real reason behind gold’s selloff, investors first need to acknowledge that it’s not just gold coming under pressure. Industrial and growth stocks are plummeting across the board. For example, Caterpillar (CAT) is down 20% in the last 30 days, base-metal commodities are headed into bear market territory. Copper is also down 15% since February and is now trading at a over a 52-week low. Oil is dropping sharply of late, falling down to $86 per barrel from the mid-90’s a few week ago. Also, the recent stock market rally has been very narrowly based. Those equities that have been working are defensive in nature like healthcare and consumer staples … that is not representative of a healthy market. So it comes down to this; investors should not make the same mistake they did during the fall of 2008, namely, ignoring the deflationary forces that are at work in certain parts of the world. Commodity bear markets aren’t good for earnings if they are representative of a worldwide economic collapse.
  
• Taxation Is Theft. Posted 4/18/2013. By Andrew P. Napolitano. Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. Judge Napolitano has written seven books on the U.S. Constitution.
• Argentina Revolts Against Government Push To Take Control Of Judicial System. Posted 4/18/2013. The streets of Buenos Aires are full of revolting Argentinians this evening as they protest President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner's (CFdK) plans to 'increase' state control of the court system. CFdK's proposal looks to limit the judicial system's ability to bring actions against the state, as Bloomberg reports, leaving citizens and companies unprotected against state actions affecting their finance or assets (i.e. mass nationalization or confiscation).
• History Tells Us That A Gold Crash + An Oil Crash = Guaranteed Recession. Posted 4/17/2013. At some point, there will be another major stock market crash. When it happens, we will likely see even worse chaos than we saw back in 2008. Major financial institutions will fail, the credit markets will freeze up, economic activity will grind to a standstill and millions of Americans will lose their jobs. I sincerely hope that we still have at least a few more months before that happens. But right now things are moving very rapidly and it is becoming increasingly clear that time is running out.
• This Gold Slam is a Massive Wealth Transfer from Our Pockets to the Banks. Posted 4/15/2013. Details the HFT (high-frequency trading) that went on Sunday evening.
• The FBI Fosters, Funds and Equips American Terrorists. Posted 4/17/2013.
• “People Running Through The Gate” To Buy Gold Bullion. Posted 4/17/2013.
• Paper Selling In The West Could Spur A Gold Rush In The East. Posted 4/16/2013. When prices for precious metals drop, the Eastern countries (particularly India and China) are buyers, not sellers.
• Price and Availability – Revisited. Posted 4/16/2013. If open interest does not decline after the drop in price and this latest margin hike (and maybe more to come) the odds of longs standing in a big way for delivery increases exponentially. As for the physical markets, the longer they keep the “price” down the more and more physical metal will be gobbled up. We were already extremely tight in the physical silver market. The last 2 days price action has cleaned up inventory and left shelves nearly bare of silver. This is what you’d expect in a real market. As always, Mother Nature will take care of price when availability is short. Premiums have risen as supply dwindled. I do not believe that the “price” in the physical market can stay where it is now for very long, otherwise we will have a supply “event” where there is none to be had… UNTIL price rises to entice sellers. This low price will also add incentive to paper longs to stand for delivery if the physical price is far higher than the paper price. It would simply be an arbitrage where COMEX silver is purchased at one price and sold on the physical market for another (higher) price. It very well may be that the COMEX is engineering its own demise that ends in a default because they so blatantly defied supply and demand in the real world.
• The Price Smash – Who, What, How and Why? Posted 4/16/2013. Speculates that JP Morgan may have cleared its huge short position in silver. We will know more after Friday's COT report.
• If Gold Was "Just A Commodity" What Would Be Its Support Price. Posted 4/16/2013. Should gold assume its commodity role, its cost of production should provide some guidance. Last year, the average cost of production was $673/oz, and the marginal cost of production (90th percentile) was $1104/oz. Assuming sustaining capex at around $200/oz, this indicates cost support at around $1300/oz, based on last year’s data; our global database encompasses 35% of global production. The average cost of production was quite stable in the 1990s but has risen by an average 16% y/y over the past five years. The marginal cost of production has risen by 69% over the past five years, rising by 15.2% last year. Support comes into play initially at around $1300/oz before a substantial quantity of mine production is put at risk.
• (YouTube) Why Did Silver & Gold Collapse? Mike Maloney and Chris Martenson. Posted 4/16/2013. Time duration: 10 minutes.
• 16% of US Annual Silver Supply Just Vaporized. Posted 4/15/2013. Rio Tinto’s Kennecott mine in Utah--the US’ 2nd largest silver mine and world’s largest copper mine--has just suffered a massive landslide which will likely shut down production at the mine for years as upwards of 1 billion tons of dirt and ore have collapsed into the basin. According to Rio Tinto’s VP of Marketing Vania Grandi, Kennecott produces up to 5 million ounces of silver, and 1/2 million ounces of gold annually. The total US mine output for silver in 2012 was 1,050 tons for 2012 or 30.6 million ounces, and US gold production was 230 tons, meaning Rio Tinto’s Kennecott accounted for upwards of 16% of total US silver supply, and 5% of US gold supply!!! See video here: Massive landslide damages Kennecott's Bingham Canyon Mine.
• All US Wholesalers Sold Out Of All Physical Silver!!!. Posted 4/15/2013. Two of the largest wholesale suppliers in the US, including Amark and CNT, who is the supplier of gold blanks to the US Mint for Gold Eagles, and is a registered COMEX depository, HAVE JUST SOLD OUT OF ALL PHYSICAL SILVER!!! Apparently the fact that one of the largest wholesale suppliers in the US is SOLD OUT, while simultaneously the 2nd largest silver mine in the US is offline perhaps permanently is of absolutely no consequence to the paper dumping cartel bullion banks.
• Notes on today. Question: I see that everywhere (increased premiums on the metals), but once they sell of their current stock (which they bought high so they have to jack up the premium), the new inventory will probably have much less premium. Right? Answer: New inventory... LOL. The blank makers have to get their metal from somewhere, and it's not going to come from good delivery bars bought on the futures exchanges, so that leaves the miners. I don't think the miners are going to be super excited about production at low prices and will scale back. Physical supply is going to get tighter, ergo premiums higher. Of course if the LBMA default rumors are true, AU will go to the stratosphere shortly, and premiums will be the last thing to worry about.
• Maguire - LBMA Default Triggered Gold & Silver Takedown. Posted 4/15/2013. Gold and silver only have this type of selling when there are extreme shortages of the physical metal. I am totally aware that before this takedown occurred there was an imminent LBMA (London Bullion Market Association) default. We had already seen COMEX inventories plunging. In 90 days COMEX inventories saw an incredible decline. So immediately available physical gold was disappearing. People around the world don’t understand what has been happening since Cyprus. Entities went to the LBMA and said, ‘We don’t trust anybody anymore. We want our physical metal.’ They were told they would be cash settled instead by a bullion bank. The Western governments have been trying to plug holes, and the reason for it has to do with the default that was taking place at the LBMA. This is why this smash has been orchestrated because of the run that has been taking place on physical metal. So Western governments had to do this because of an imminent run on the unallocated LBMA system. The LBMA bullion banks had become so mismatched at one point on their trading positions vs real world demand that they had to orchestrate this smash. This orchestrated smash in gold and silver was nothing short of a bailout for the bullion banks. So there is a run on physical gold that is taking place and the Ponzi scheme the West is running is being threatened because of it.
• Force Majeure Was the End Game All Along!. Posted 4/15/2013. The COMEX will default in the next week or several weeks and people will be “settled” with dollars, no more metal will be delivered! So, knowing that “game over” has arrived, they are dumping a massive volume of paper contracts with impunity to push the metals prices as low as possible before the “default.” This way the “shorts” do not have to and will not be “covered” when “supply” cannot be obtained because of “an act of God.” They will be settled in cash (at a profit no less) because these “unforeseen” disruptions in supply. I would suspect that banking stress and “bail ins” will also become prevalent globally. The pricing structure will now push any and all physical sellers away from the markets and the “door” to safety is effectively being shut. Either you own metal or you don’t.
• History In The Making. Posted 4/15/2013. Provides two possible scenarios. Scenario #1: That this 10% drop from Friday's close is roughly the bottom. Scenario #2: That we are seeing the end of the fractional reserve bullion banking system. That is, to avoid physical settlement (because there isn't any), the Comex simply halts paper metal trading and cash settles at some arbitary, closing price. In other words, a Comex default.
• Is Pope Francis Laying The Groundwork For A One World Religion? Posted 4/15/2013. The new pope is trying to unite Islam with Catholicism.
• What Happened The Last Time We Saw Gold Drop Like This? Posted 4/15/2013.
• How the Gold Market was Crashed. Posted 4/12/2013. There’s been a recent huge draw down of physical gold at the New York COMEX and at the JP Morgan Chase depository. You can imagine the dilemma this is causing for the market interests behind these inventories. If the inventory runs out and one cannot meet deliveries then it has to be bought on the open market. Not only that but it could cause a run up in prices that would hurt the shorts in the market.
• The Average Person will soon Not Be Able to Afford Gold and Silver. Posted 4/14/2013. This will not last beyond August of this year and at that point in time, if not sooner, physical precious metals prices could become untenable or beyond the reach of the average middle class American as the supply crisis finally forces reality to meet minimum purchase requirements.
• GLD Holdings Plunge. Posted 4/12/2013. As of this past Wednesday, GLD’s holdings had fallen a mind-boggling 12.5% in just over 4 months! It has had to liquidate 1/8th of its total gold bullion to keep up with stock traders rushing for the gold exits. Over this same span, the gold price is down 8.6%.
• Gold Price Drops Below $1,500 and €1,150. Posted 4/12/2013.
• What Has Happened Since… Posted 4/12/2013. What has happened to the world economies since the September 6, 2011, high on gold of $1,920/oz. A whole slew of terrible economic news that should be bullish for precious metals. Nevertheless, they continue to be pummelled to lower prices.
• Cyprus: The Nightmare Scenario and How to Avoid It in America. Posted 3/21/2013. By Laurence Kotlikoff. Excellent summary of the Cyprus banking crisis and a proposed solution.
• 30 Blocks Of Squalor - Government Built It, But They Didn't Come. Posted 4/11/2013. Details a failed government-sponsored project in Philadelphia.
• Japan Hyper QE Inflation Wars, Bank of England's Bail-in Secret, Buy Gold, Silver? Posted 4/9/2013. Currency wars described from a British perspective.
• The template that nobody is watching. Posted 4/8/2013. Deposits can not only fall driven by fear, but also by greed. This is the case in 2013 in Argentina, a likely template for the US.
• Force Majeure Inevitable as Silver Shortage Reaches Climax. Posted 4/9/2013. They are riding the brake and flooring the gas at the same time by trying to create “velocity” while at the same time breaking the thermometers (suppressing the prices of Gold and Silver). This cannot work for any length of time because “stirring up the herd” cannot be stopped once started. If (when) they actually do get some “velocity” of money, some of this will naturally (already has and is) find its way toward the precious metals. The problem is this, if the shelves go bare and investors find that metal is not available, human nature will make them want it even MORE! Nothing will create demand in a bigger fashion than when something is unavailable which is exactly what unnaturally low prices will do!
• Comex Gold Inventories Collapse By Largest Amount Ever On Record. Posted 4/9/2013. Over the last 90 days without any announcement, stocks of gold held at Comex warehouses plunged by the largest figure ever on record during a single quarter since eligible record keeping began in 2001. The timing of this trend change is also quite shocking, as it’s happening during a time in which public sentiment towards the metals are at their worse levels in years.
• [Arizona] House backs privately minted coins as legal tender. Posted 4/9/2013. A version of the measure already has been approved by the Senate. That means only a final Senate vote is necessary before the measure goes to the governor. Probable implementation will be mid-2014. Utah passed a similar bill two years ago.
• Can I survive and prosper within the Police State? Lists the Executive Orders that turn this country into a Police State.
• 25 Things That You Should Do To Get Prepared For The Coming Economic Collapse. Posted 4/8/2013. (1) An emergency fund, (2) don't put all of your eggs into one basket, (3) keep some cash at home, (4) get out of debt, (5) gold and silver, (6) reduce your expenses, (7) start a side business, (8) move away from the big cities, (9) store food, (10) learn to grow your own food, (11) water, (12) have a plan when the grid goes down, (13) blankets and warm clothing, (14) hygiene supplies, (15) medical supplies, (16) store up vitamins, (17) list of supplies, (18) needs of babies and pets, (19) entertainment, (20) self-defense, (21) ammunition, (22) if you have to go, (23) community, (24) back-up plan, (25) keep your prepping to yourself.
• Kyle Bass: "Japan Will Implode Under Weight Of Their Debt". Posted 4/4/2013. Out of the gate Bass explains the massive significance of what the Japanese are embarking on, "they are essentially doubling the monetary base by the end of 2104." For a sense of the scale of the BoJ's 'experimentation', Bass sums it up perfectly (and concerningly), "the BoJ is monetizing at a rate around 75% of the Fed on an economy that is one-third the size of the US!"
• Are All G20 Bank Depositors Exposed to a Cyprus Style Seizure of Deposits for a 'Bail-in?' Posted 4/3/2013. "Because the use of taxpayer-funded bailouts would likely no longer be tolerated by the public, a new bank rescue plan was needed. As it turns out, this new "bail-in" model is based on an agreement that was the result of a bank bail-out model that was drafted by a sub-committee of the BIS (Bank for International Settlement) and endorsed at a G20 summit in 2011. For those of you who don't know, the BIS is the global "Central Bank" of Central Banks. As such it is the world's most powerful financial institution.
  
  ...the agreement references specifically avoiding more taxpayer bailouts. It also refers to bank deposits in excess of Government insured amounts as "uninsured creditors." This is essentially the standard legal bankruptcy model which uses creditor hierarchy (secured lenders, unsecured lenders, preferred equity, equity) and applies to the rescuing of banks.
  
  This is very important to know about and understand because what is commonly referred to as a "bail-in" in Cyprus is actually a global bank rescue model that was derived and ratified nearly two years ago. It also means that bank deposits in excess of Government insured amounts in any bank in any country will be treated like unsecured debt if the bank goes belly-up and is restructured in some form.
  
  
• Former US Treasury Official - Fed Desperate To Save System. Posted 4/3/2013. If the Fed can’t print money they can’t buy the bonds to keep the banks solvent and buy the bonds to keep the Treasury operating. The rising gold price is a threat to that. So the Fed is taking desperate action against gold.
• ‘Gold Only Rises During the Bad Times’ and other Fairy Tales. Posted 4/2/2013.
• When Should You Take Social Security? 62 or Full Retirement Age? Posted 4/1/2013. You are better off taking social security at age 62. The break even comes at age 78.
• Freedom In The 50 States. Posted 4/1/2013. Tennessee ranks #3 in terms of freedom, as defined by that website. Further discussed here: Where (in the States) Can You Find Freedom?
• Greater Fool's Day. Posted 4/1/2013. Seven weeks ago, the silver commercials were already gross long a record amount of contracts at 46,293. As of last Tuesday, that amount had grown to 55,564. Up another 20%. And the Forces of Darkness were gross short 98,239 contracts on 2/5/13. As of last Tuesday, that number had declined to 79,605. A reduction of 19%. And all of this buying and covering has dropped the all-important Cartel net short ratio back to an extremely bullish 1.43:1. The only other time I can recall seeing that ratio lower was on 12/27/11. With price near $26.50 and on its way to $37 over the next two months, the Silver Cartel net short ratio was 1.34:1.
• (YouTube) Petrodollar Collapse - Economic disaster on the horizon. ep#20 part 1 of 3 www.SuccessCouncil.com. Posted 3/25/2013.
• Gold Prices Will "Explode" When These Investors Start Buying. Posted 3/26/2013. The argument is that pension funds will start getting into gold.
• (YouTube) Geopolitical Giants: BRICS world's wealthiest bloc in 30 yrs?. Posted 3/26/2013.
• New gold discoveries declining at accelerating rate. Posted 3/25/2013. According to a study which covers announced gold deposit finds over the past 10 years, this decline (in new global discoveries and in particular in gold grades) has been accelerating over the past four years and if the trend continues, which seems likely as the easier-to-find deposits have perhaps mostly already been discovered, then the future of global mined gold supplies will gradually become affected.
• Sprott: Do Western Central Banks Have Any Gold Left? Part II. Posted 3/19/2013. Sprott describes what he deems a “smoking gun”; no less, from the U.S. government’s own annals. Per today’s “QUOTE OF THE DAY,” his team has uncovered documents suggesting the U.S. government has secretly dishoarded between 4,500 and 11,200 tonnes of gold reserves since 1991; and likely, far more, as said records only go back that far. Considering the U.S. government claims it holds 8,134 tonnes in Fort Knox, West Point, and the Denver Mint –with no audits since the mid-1950s – Sprott’s research indicates it may ALL be gone.
• Have The Russians Already Quietly Withdrawn All Their Cash From Cyprus? Posted 3/25/2013. As it turns out, these same oligrachs may have used the one week hiatus period of total chaos in the banking system to transfer the bulk of the cash they had deposited with one of the two main Cypriot banks, in the process making the whole punitive point of collapsing the Cyprus financial system entirely moot.
• For Everyone Shocked By What Just Happened... And Why This Is Just The Beginning. Posted 3/25/2013. Such mandatory, coercive wealth tax is merely the beginning for a world in which there was some $21 trillion in excess debt as of 2009, a number which has since ballooned to over $30 trillion. For most countries, a haircut of 11 to 30 percent would be sufficient to cover the costs of an orderly debt restructuring. For the United States it would be 26%. Only in Greece, Spain, and Portugal would the burden for the private sector be significantly higher.
• The Global Property Obsession Continues. Posted 3/23/2013. 'Last year, institutional investors made up 19% of all sales in Las Vegas, 21% in Charlotte, 23% in Phoenix, and 30% in Miami,' writes ZeroHedge. The problem is, they're flooding the rental market, which is pushing down rents. There's a crisis in the making here. If interest rates rise and rents stay low because of oversupply, the hedge funds will be in trouble. Michael Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg calls this 'one of the biggest disasters waiting to happen in the US economy.' If the hedge funds try to escape en masse, house prices could fall just as interest rates rise.
• (YouTube) European Bank Runs Could Spread Like Wildfire Due to Cyprus Banks-Laurence Kotlikoff. Posted 3/25/2013. Bank runs due to bank insolvency, bank crises, or inflation (get money out and buy something tangible before the money becomes worthless). Very well presented information.
• A Word Out Of Place Sends Europe Tumbling. Posted 3/25/2013. Uninsured depositors in the Bank of Cyprus will have their accounts frozen while the bank is restructured and recapitalised. Any capital that is needed to strengthen the bank will be drawn from accounts above 100,000 euros. The agreement is what is known as a "bail-in", with shareholders and bondholders in banks forced to bear the costs of the restructuring first, followed by uninsured depositors. Under EU rules, deposits up to 100,000 euros are guaranteed. The approach marks a radical departure for euro zone policy after three years of crisis in which taxpayers across the region have effectively been on the hook for resolving problem banks and indebted governments via multiple rescue programmes.
• Money In The Bank? No Thanks. Posted 3/22/2013. In Niall Ferguson’s Civilization: The West and the Rest, he presents a list of institutional arrangements that turned a bunch of ignorant, “malodorous” Europeans into the world’s dominant culture in the space of a couple of centuries. One of those institutional arrangements was property rights...
• (Yahoo) Jim Rickards - Why Texas May Start to Hoard Gold - Fort Knox of Texas. Posted 3/21/2013. The Daily Ticker's Lauren Lyster and Jim Rickards discuss Texas' proposed gold legislation & It's own Fort Knox of Texas & More....
• Troops betrayed in Cyprus bank grab... as Russians seize £2bn. Posted 3/20/2013. Fury erupted yesterday as it emerged that rich Russians withdrew £2billion BEFORE a tax raid on bank savings in Cyprus was announced. The controversial one-off tax was announced on Saturday as part of a 10billion euro bailout. But Russian oligarchs and big investors emptied accounts in the days beforehand, prompting claims they were tipped off by bank insiders. A source told The Sun: “It leaked out. Bankers warned their best clients. Government officials warned their friends and relatives. Billions disappeared from accounts in days, most from accounts held by Russians. Russians are by far the biggest overseas investors in Cyprus, with a stake estimated at 20billion euros.
• Sinclair - The Next Danger After Putin Crushed IMF In Cyprus. Posted 3/20/2013. The IMF has now put itself into a very difficult position. The IMF must now support Cyprus, even in the face of the rejection of the attempted confiscation of partial bank deposits, or let the Cyprus banking system seek its own solutions to its banking problems, which would be Russian Corporations, or Russia itself. If Russia was to save the Cyprus banking institutions, then, basically, a sovereign nation has trumped the IMF. I believe this is unacceptable to the IMF because it would mean that the IMF would not carry the clout which it has carried over the years as a group of many nations. If one nation can turn the switch ‘off’ against the IMF, it’s going to be very hard to turn that switch back ‘on’ at the IMF.
• Sinclair - Cyprus Disaster Is Much Bigger Than Being Reported. Posted 3/19/2013. Keep an eye on the Cyprus news. This might be a slow burn or, as Jim Sinclair explains, the beginning of a rush to gold by the Russians. “If people believe that $13 billion is the total of this bailout, they are out of their minds. $130 billion is not the true total of even the Russian deposits in Cyprus banks. One important Russian businessman, in his various business enterprises, would have $100 billion on deposit himself. 10% of all deposits in Cypress could be $500 billion or more because Cyprus is the banking entity for Russia, not Switzerland or Grand Cayman. The Central Bank of Cyprus doesn't even know how big the Russian deposits are because it is held as secret at the behest of the Russians. It is a secret banking system set up for the Russians, by the Russians, and the IMF has just taken a large bite out of that elephant.
  
  Part of the result of all of this is the Russian elite will now move heavily out of currencies and into gold. Going forward, the Russian sovereign entity will now support the price of gold and it will be for the benefit of the Russian oligarchy. This will also serve to bring Russian and Chinese financial interests closer together, and, in time, will finally result in freeing the gold market from Western price manipulation and influence.
  
  This IMF catastrophe in Cyprus is literally a landmark event in history, and the single most important event in the entire history of the gold market. I full expect that the key point I have now made, that this concerns much more money than has been reported...”
  
  
• (YouTube) Selling My One Ounce Gold Coin for $20 (When It Was Worth $1600) Oops! I needed some money, so I went to the wealthy beach community of Del Mar, California to see if I could unload my one ounce gold coin. Here's what happened.
• America's March Toward Cyprus Status. Posted 3/18/2013. Denninger predicts that in 2 years the U.S. will be doing what Cyprus is attempting to do. It will raid bank account, brokerage accounts, and/or retirement accounts.
• 5 Reasons Gold Will Set an All-Time Record In 2013. Posted 3/17/2013. The 5 are: (1) The Feverish Growth of Fiat Money, (2) The Feverish Demand for Gold, (3) Even Central Banks Have Begun Buying, (4) High Demand Meets Short Supply, and (5) Analysts consistently forecast too low and are even predicting declining gold prices farther out.
• Europe Does It Again: Cyprus Depositor Haircut "Bailout" Turns Into Saver "Panic", Frozen Assets, Bank Runs, Broken ATMs. Posted 3/17/2013. Specifically, Cyprus will impose a levy of 6.75% on deposits of less than €100,000 - the ceiling for European Union account insurance, which is now effectively gone following this case study - and 9.9% above that. The measures will raise €5.8 billion, Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem, who leads the group of euro-area ministers, said.
• Doubts About America’s Official Gold Holdings: The US Gold Reserve Audit. Posted 3/14/2013. Lots of problems with the so called "audit".
• How Not To Make Gold Money. Posted 3/14/2013. Central banking and sound money are mutually exclusive -- that they cannot co-exist in the same economy anymore than lovemaking and rape can co-exist in the same act. It has to be one OR the other. Hence, the return to sound money cannot be achieved without ending the Fed. Keeping the Fed with a gold standard would lead to something like the bad experience Britain had when it tried to return to a prewar ratio of gold to the British pound.
• A Community-Based Alternative to the Welfare State. Posted 3/14/2013.
• U.S. dollar’s share of central bank reserves falls to 54% in 2012: World Gold Council. Posted 3/14/2013.
• (Bloomberg) Obama Began Currency Wars in 2010 - Jim Rickards. Posted 3/14/2013. Good summary by Jim Rickards on where we are in the currency wars. Mr. Rickards say's the U.K. Pound Sterling will be as of now the Biggest Loser as they have no Gold to fight with. He expects continued inflation around the world.
• Dan Collins – China Is Moving Full Stream Ahead. Posted 3/13/2013. An insider view of the Chinese economy. It's a lot better off than what most outsiders report. He believes that much Western reporting that makes numerous claims of an economic bubble are gross exaggerations. The ghost cities are largely overblown. Most Chinese are cash buyers and even those that take out mortgages still put up 30 percent.
• Net Worth vs. Net Value. Posted 3/13/2013. As an alternative to Net Worth, let's start a list of attributes of Net Value:

The number of close friendships you have nurtured.
The number of people you have mentored.
The number of children you've given abundant time to.
The number of trees and gardens you've nurtured with your own time and handiwork.
The number of practical skills you've acquired and freely shared with others.
The time you have spent alone, not in pursuit of work or pleasure but of solitude.
The self-directed mastery of difficult disciplines.
The number of strangers (foreign visitors, etc.) you have aided or invited into your home without any financial compensation or recognition.

• Kyle Bass Warns "The 'AIG' Of The World Is Back". Posted 3/12/2013. His single best investment idea for the next ten years is, "Sell JPY, Buy Gold, and go to sleep."
• An economy of peak food stamp usage, peak Dow, and peak Debt: What does it say about our economy that at the same time the Dow Jones hits a peak, we have the highest percentage of Americans on food stamps? Posted 3/12/2013.
• Gold, Destructive Hyperinflation & The Final End Game. Posted 3/12/2013. The mechanics for currency devaluation are straightforward and would be simple to exercise: The Federal Reserve System would announce a program of gold monetization in which the Fed offers to tender for any and all gold in qualifying forms at a fixed price of say US $10,000 per troy ounce. The program would be conducted through participating U.S. chartered banks, which would be instructed to properly assay gold and exchange it for U.S. dollars to be placed in customer bank accounts as deposits. Deposit holders will be entitled to make withdrawals in the form of dollars or gold at the fixed exchange rate.
• Jim Willie: The Collapse Is At Our Doorstep. Posted 3/12/2013. On YouTube. The collapse is happening now--it’s no longer ultra-slow motion like 2 years ago. It’s a new event every few days or weeks. The pace of extreme events is quickening. Extreme events have become the norm, putting tremendous additional stress on the system which the boys are trying to manage. They don’t have enough people, enough resources, enough channels, and they don’t have enough brains to do it....A series of climax events is coming very soon. The changes will be rapid and breath-taking. I think vast wealth is going to be lost in the US and the West, except by gold and silver owners. Owning gold and silver will become harder to do because the rules are becoming stricter.
• The relationship between money and prices. Posted 3/10/2013. Velocity is an invention by economists to balance an equation conjured out of their own imagination, instead of understanding that the purchasing power of today’s fiat currencies is governed solely by the confidence placed in them. And because they have no intrinsic value, the quantity theory itself is a wholly inadequate explanation of the relationship between fiat money and prices....Consider the Icelandic krona’s dramatic fall in purchasing power in October 2008....What actually happened was simply a collapse in the purchasing power of the krona that originated in the markets, which had nothing to do with any monetary equation.
• Silver’s Industrial Demand: The Best Is Yet to Come. Posted 3/8/2013.
• Commodities 'supercycle' will last another 15 years: JP Morgan. Posted 3/7/2013. The basic idea is that the emerging world still has a lot of commodity intensive growth ahead.
• (YouTube) The Economic Recovery: A Novel Perspective from Ed Leamer (The Numbers Game with Russ Roberts). Posted 3/6/2013. In an era of technological change, where the microprocessor is causing the destruction of old assets.
• (YouTube) How the Markets Are Manipulated. 3/6/2013. As the major stock indices hit new record highs, many are left wondering how such a bull market can develop while the average worker faces layoffs, lower wages and rising costs. The answer presents itself in the documented, admitted and openly acknowledged manipulations of the markets by governments, central bankers, and institutional banks. Particularly, the video documents the manipulation of the gold market.
• Dollar’s top, commodity’s bottom approaching. Posted 3/6/2013. As you can see in the next chart, as soon as the dollar began to rally out of its last intermediate bottom, commodities, including oil and gold, all began to move down into major intermediate degree declines...
• Jim Willie: Raging Gold Bull & Disputed Propaganda. Posted 3/6/2013. Notes:
  • The propaganda has turned openly laughable.
  • The entire global financial structure is crumbling before our eyes.
  • The global monetary war is heating up notably.
  • The US has become Weimar Amerika, a fascist enclave. More than a crisis, it is more accurately described as a collapse of a corrupt inequitable monetary system, and a desperate defense by the major Western bankers to preserve their power over nations and their governments...
• Seismic Shift: Middle East Shifting From Oil Exporters To Net Importers!. Posted 3/5/2013. Saudi Arabia is the 6th LARGEST OIL CONSUMER ON THE PLANET NOW! The world is suffering a 5% annual decline rate in oil production. That means they have to add 3-3.5 million barrels a day to stay FLAT. There have been new oil projects that have come online… but all they have done is to MASK the DECLINE RATE.
• DHS ordered 2700 armored trucks. Posted 3/4/2013. This is getting a little creepy. According to one estimate, since last year the Department of Homeland Security has stockpiled more than 1.6 billion bullets, mainly .40 caliber and 9mm. DHS also purchased 2,700 Mine Resistant Armor Protected Vehicles (MRAP). (30-35,0000 drones are on order--being built in Starkville, Miss.)
• The Inflation Secrets Your Broker Won’t Tell You About. Posted 3/4/2013. The US Government and the US Federal Reserve downplay the threat of inflation. There are two primary reasons for this:
  • 1) Acknowledging higher inflation would mean both revising GDP growth much lower...
  • 2) One of the primary arguments the Fed uses for why it can print hundreds of billions of Dollars without hurting consumers it because inflation remains “contained” or “transitory.”

  Because of this, you won’t see any real acknowledgement of inflation by the US Government or the Fed until it’s far too late. Remember, one of the central goals for these organizations is to maintain confidence in the system. Indeed, while the mainstream financial media continues to trumpet the wonders of stocks closing in on all-time highs, larger, more sophisticated players are preparing for a financial meltdown in a much larger market: bonds.
  

• (YouTube) Skeptics Questions on Gold Manipulation W/ GATA.org. Posted 3/3/2013. Near the end of the interview: The manipulation of silver will eventually end in severe shortages.
• World Gold Council to teach central bankers how to trade gold. Posted 2/13/2013. Central bankers will be taught how to trade gold at a three-day seminar on "gold reserves management" to be held in March at the University of California at Berkeley and co-sponsored by the World Gold Council.
• (YouTube) Wealth Inequality in America. Published 11/20/2012. Infographics on the distribution of wealth in America, highlighting both the inequality and the difference between our perception of inequality and the actual numbers. The reality is often not what we think it is.
• China’s $3.3 Trillion FX Reserves Could Buy All World’s Gold Twice. Posted 3/4/2013. By comparison, the combined total among Brazil, Russia and India is $1.1 trillion. Continuing diversification into gold from the huge foreign exchange reserves by the People’s Bank of China and other central banks is a primary pillar which will support gold and should contribute to higher prices in the coming years.
• Why Central States/Banks Inflate Asset Bubbles, And Why They Implode. Posted 2/28/2013. Central states live off taxes skimmed from wages and profits. If wages are stagnant, the state needs profits and capital gains to rise to support higher tax revenues. In other words: inflate assets or die. Let's look at some charts that reflect the failure of massive money-printing and credit expansion to actually boost wages and household borrowing.
• Gold Backwardation Since 2008 = Financial System Died. Posted 2/28/2013. The Great Global Supply Chain System is now starting to show signs of buckling. Basically, the world’s retail stores will not be able to keep stores STOCKED. This also gets worse when we figure in the decline of NET OIL EXPORTS. You see, American Wages have been falling for decades. The US Govt realizes the only way they are going to get additional revenue is from assets profits and capital gains. Thus, the reason why they are printing. Now, on the other hand, if they stopped printing, its just more than a Deflationary Collapse…. its a DISINTEGRATION OF THE GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAIN SYSTEM. Once the supply chain starts to break down… the cascading ramifications are just to horrible to think about.
• (Bloomberg) Could Argentine Bond Battle Spark $20B Bankruptcy? Posted 2/28/2013.
• Richard Russell - Gold, Silver, Stocks & Collapsing Incomes. Posted 2/28/2013. The best investment today is owning a business that throws off income. The second best investment today is a profession that throws off income (doctor, dentist, lawyer, computer expert, etc.) The final best investment is a job in an industry that is safe and stable. Many years go I predicted that in coming years, the most wanted item would be INCOME.
• Moroccan Pottery Classes, Shrimp On Treadmills And Obamaphones - Bernanke's Biggest Bloopers Tie It All Together. Posted 2/28/2013. ...the definitive five minutes comes from this fiery confrontation between Sean Duffy and the Chairman, in which the republican has obviously had enough with the monetary policy chief coming in Congress and telling Congress how to conduct fiscal policy, when it is Bernanke's deficit-monetizing actions that allow zero-cost borrowing and thus profligate, indiscriminate spending to result in such lunacy as total US debt just hitting a record 16,618,701,810,927.77.
• Trust me, this time is different… Posted 2/28/2013. By 1789, a lot of French people were starving. Their economy had long since deteriorated into a weak, pitiful shell. Decades of unsustainable spending had left the French treasury depleted. The currency was being rapidly debased....the French monarchy was dangerously out of touch with reality...eventually losing their heads in a 1793 execution. But it took the French economy decades to finally recover. Along the way, the government tried an experiment: issuing a form of paper money.
  
  As French Assemblyman M. Matrineau put it in 1790, “Paper money under a despotism is dangerous. It favors corruption. But in a nation constitutionally governed, which itself takes care in the emission of its notes [and] determines their number and use, that danger no longer exists.” Translation: This time is different. We’re different. We’re smarter. We won’t suffer the same fate. TRUST US.
  
  Within a few years, hyperinflation had taken hold in France. A measure of flour that sold for two francs in 1790 was selling for 225 francs by 1795. Everything soared. Carriage hires. Butter. Sugar. Everything....the French government imposed every control in the book– price controls, capital controls, information controls, people controls. They confiscated lands, they filled the prisons, they waged genocide against their own people.
  
  
• They Want To Tag Us Before They Bag Us. Posted 2/25/2013. If President Obama, John McCain (R., AZ), Lindsey Graham (R., SC), Marco Rubio (R., FL), Lindsey Graham (R., SC.), Charles Schumer (D., NY.), Jeff Flake (R., AZ.), Michael Bennet (D., CO.), and implicated child molester Robert Menendez (D., N.J.), get their way, it will soon be law that if you want to board an airplane, to vote, to purchase a firearm, hold a job and basically buy and sell anything, then you will be required to submit to a National ID Card which will soon become part of a global ID system.
• Gold, silver coins acceptable forms of payment? Posted 2/21/2013. The Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday took the first steps to making such [privately minted gold and silver] coins legal tender in Arizona. SB1439 would give them the same legal status as bills and coins authorized by Congress.
• Gold - Here Is The Good News. Posted 2/21/2013. The results of analysis of the "death cross" formations in gold since 1972 suggest that there is little difference with an average day during the same period. Since 1972, gold passed through 22 “death cross” formations which returned between 1.29% (in the month after) and 3.17% (in the following six months).
• The Men Who Built America: Remembering The Gilded Age Part 1. Posted 2/21/2013. History Channel program of John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford and J.P. Morgan.
• The Forces That Will Push Silver Over $100. Posted 2/21/2013.
  • Investment demand has been and will continue to be the driving force behind the rising price of silver. One area that denotes increased investment demand is “official coins” produced by the government mints. According to the data provided by the 2012 World Silver Survey, total global silver investment demand has risen from only 31.6 million oz in 2002 to a staggering 282.2 million oz in 2011.
  • The top 6 silver miners in the world have seen their average yield decline 34% in six years from 13 oz per tonne in 2005 to only 8.6 oz/t in 2011. As ore grades and yields decline, it takes more energy to produce the same or less silver.
  • Once the world ‘s liquid energy supply starts its inevitable decline from its current plateau, annual silver metal production will decline as well (or may follow soon thereafter).
• (YouTube) Climate Change in 12 Minutes - The Skeptic's Case. Posted 2/20/2013. It's not about Science, but about Politics and Power.
• Major Top in Stocks and Major Bottom in Gold. 2/20/2013. The author expects a similar pattern to the 2007-2008 for the stock market and oil, but this time it will be the stock market and precious metals.
• Marc Faber - Major Bottom Forming In Gold But Stocks Shaky. Posted 2/21/2013. The "Great Asset Inflation" since 1980 of stocks, bonds, and real estate may be coming to an end. This is a great opportunity to increase one's position in gold.
• (YouTube) Hidden Meaning in the New $100 Bill (by Bix Weir) Posted 3/15/2012. The text: The Hidden Meanings in the New $100 Bill!
• Gold's Regular Morning Mugging. Posted 2/20/2013. From our perspective here at Peak Prosperity, for all of the reasons explored in the Crash Course and discussed here daily, we firmly believe that fundamentals will ultimately matter most. And when they fully express themselves, there will be a tremendous re-pricing of assets – largely higher for tangible assets that require energy to obtain, and markedly lower for paper claims on wealth (stocks, bonds, and their derivatives). But as we've often said, the corrective process may very well take much longer than we ever expected to arrive. Frankly, we're amazed that the system has held together so well over the past 5 years with all of the thin-air money printing, trillion-dollar deficits, and $100 oil.
• (Yahoo) Forget the Death Cross, Gold Is a Buy: Pento. Posted 2/20/2013. Negative interest rates are here to stay, given Bernanke's targets for inflation. Central banks continue to buy gold. Our national debt will continue to increase. All of these signs are bullish for gold. The current pullback, although steep and unexpected, should be regarded as a buying opportunity.
• (YouTube) Truth: The Freedomain Radio Documentary - Teaser. Posted 2/19/2013. Everything we try to fix only gets worse: Education, Poverty, Retirement, Economic Inequality.
• PIMCO's Gross sees U.S. economy on road to extinction. Posted 1/31/2013. U.S. government, corporate, household and personal debt is now $56 trillion, a monster that needs ever increasing amounts of fuel, Gross said, calling it a "supernova star that expands and expands, yet, in the process begins to consume itself."
• What Will ‘Debt Jubilee’ Look Like? Posted 2/17/2013. Unfortunately, the debt Jubilee will be for the Oligarchs. The peasants will still owe 100-cents-on-the-dollar.
• (YouTube) HAARP -- There Are 34 of Them! Posted 2/13/2013. Used to disable enemy war missiles, according to this electric engineer. Also talks about Japan's Fukishima disaster.
• The Global Endgame in Fourteen Points. Posted 2/15/2013. An over-indebted, overcapacity economy cannot generate real expansion. It can only generate speculative asset bubbles that will implode, destroying the latest round of phantom collateral. Also see: (YouTube) 03-05-13-Macro Analytics - The Global End Game - with Charles Hugh Smith.
• Your Silver Pacifier. Posted 2/15/2013. Questions: (1) Is the Silver market rigged? (2) How is it done? (3) Why are they doing it? (4) When will it end? Answer for #4: The market rigging will end when the benefits of printing unbacked fiat money no longer outweigh the costs.
• Don't Worry, Be Resilient. Posted 2/14/2013. Perhaps the wiser response is “don’t worry; be resilient.” The resilient household can be happy not only in the present surplus of energy, entitlements, goods, and services, but can also thrive in a future where the current surplus of cash, credit, and speculative gains has dried up. The easiest way to increase resilience is to reduce fragility and vulnerability.
• No End in Sight for Global “Currency Wars”. Posted 2/14/2013. So far, five central banks, - the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, Bank of England, the Bank of Japan and the Swiss National Bank have effectively created more than $6-trillion of new currency over the past four years, and have flooded the world money markets with excess liquidity. The size of their balance sheets has now reached a combined $9.5-trillion, compared with $3.5-trillion six years ago.
• (YouTube) The Philosophy of Liberty. Posted 12/3/2006. John Locke: Start with the idea that we "own" ourselves and, therefore, we own the fruits of our labor. You exist in time (past, present, future). This is manifest in property (past), liberty (present), and life (future). To lose life is to lose your future. To lose liberty is to lose your present. To lose property is to lose your past.
• Geoengineering: The real climate threat. Posted 2/13/2013. From CorberttReport.com. The environmental movement has developed a single-minded obsession with the supposed effects of carbon dioxide on the global climate. Rather than CO2 gas, however, the technologies that are now being proposed to mitigate this supposed problem might be the real cause of our coming environmental calamity.
• The Real Reason the Economy Is Broken (and Will Stay That Way). Posted 2/13/2013. The best I can tell you is that the markets are reflecting liquidity, not reality, and that until and unless the world suddenly starts to produce a lot more crude oil and the U.S. and Europe increase their consumption of it, I will remain quite skeptical of all pronouncements of recovery in the West.
• Top Economic Advisers Forecast War and Unrest. Posted 2/13/2013. Kyle Bass, Larry Edelson, Charles Nenner, James Dines, Nouriel Roubini, Jim Rogers, Marc Faber and Jim Rickards Warn or War
• This is what textbook capital controls look like. Posted 2/12/2013. Cristina’s policies in Argentina are leading to shortages in everything from food to fuel to electricity. Hardly a month goes by without major strikes and disruptions to public services. The purchasing power of their currency is diminishing rapidly. And most people are completely trapped. Just since 2010, President Cristina Fernandez has–
  • Nationalized private pensions, plundering the retirement savings of her people.
  • Increased tax rates across the board– income, VAT, import duties, etc. as well as imposed a new wealth tax.
  • Inflated Argentina’s money supply, printing currency with wanton abandon; M2 money supply has increased 215% in the past three years.
  • Driven the value and purchasing power of the currency down by 50%. Street-level inflation is now 30%+ per year.
  • Made a mockery of official statistics, comically understating the level of Argentine inflation and unemployment. She even began punishing economists for
  • publishing private estimates of inflation that didn’t jive with the government figures.
  • Taken over control of one industry after another, most notably the nationalization of Spanish oil firm YPF’s Argentine assets.
  • Imposed export controls of agriculture products from beef to grains, forcing growers to sell at artificially lower domestic prices.
  • Imposed capital controls, reducing her citizens’ capability to dump their poorly performing currency and hold gold, dollars, euros, or anything else.
  • Imposed a two month ‘price freeze’ on items in the supermarket, and encouraged retail consumers to rat out any grocer that doesn’t abide by the government order.
  • Imposed controls over the media, most recently ordered an advertising ban in Argentine newspapers (weakening their financial position).
    
• Embry - 1,000 Ton Swing In Gold, Russians & Chinese Buying. Posted 2/11/2013. I had always agreed with a number of mining executives that believed we were at peak gold production. But now I take it one step further. The juniors that do the exploration in the mining sector have been literally devastated, and half to a third of them will go totally out of business in the next 12 months. In that instance I don’t think we’re going to be finding much new gold at all. So consequently, as these existing mines get depleted and all mined out, I think production will fall dramatically, irrespective of what the gold price does. When you put that in the perspective of central banks, which have gone from being large suppliers of gold for years and years and now they are taking gold out of the market, you’ve had a swing of at least 1,000 tons per year in central bank activity.
  
  When you put this into the context of a market that’s only about 4,000 tons per annum, and then you add to this the fact that future gold production is literally set to plunge, I think there is no choice but for the price of gold to go ballistic on the upside. It’s just a matter of how long these paper shenanigans can continue. Once these (paper shenanigans) are over, and they will certainly be over at some point, the price will go up by multiples of the current level.
  
  
• 'American leaders do believe in the invulnerability of the dollar system, but they are misguided' - James Rickards. Posted 2/11/2013. Excellent interview with Mr. Rickards. It hits all the high points.
• The Currency War, Part I. Posted 2/11/2013. We see U.S. spending – even with all the $trillions spent on its endless wars – roughly flat. Subtract the spending on its military expeditions, subtract the spending on interest payments to the Financial Overlords, subtract the $100’s of billions per year in direct and indirect corporate subsidies; and spending on people (in real dollars) is obviously plummeting lower.
• Art Cashin - Key Indicator That Just Spiked Is Huge Warning. Posted 2/11/2013. You go back and look at history, you look at things like the Weimar Repulbic in Germany in the 20s. There it was very strange too because they actually printed money, and for months no inflation showed up, even though the money supply was increasing and increasing. Somebody once asked a famous literary character (who lived through the Weimar hyperinflation) how did he go broke? He said, ‘Slowly and then suddenly.’ The Weimar Republic saw inflation develop very slowly, and then suddenly. Once it developed it was almost like Zimbabwe except it was in a major nation, and destroyed the moral values of a whole civilization and basically led to the underpinnings of World War II.
  
• The Four Signs of a Collapsing State. Posted 2/11/2013. Government seeks control over four institutions: education, communication, money, and security. Regarding security: there is the need to monopolize the provision of security, which means controlling courts, police, and justice. The idea here is to be able to tell the population that the government is keeping everyone safe. If government is not there, terrible things will happen: monsters will take over. Thirty years ago, the police were not militarized, the courts were not clogged to the point of being useless, the jails were not full to capacity, and there was a sense that the system was flawed but essentially workable. That is no longer true. After 9-11, the state overreached and militarized the entire security system in this country, thereby exposing its essential nature. More and more people are catching on to the reality that the security system is not there to protect us but rather to protect the state itself from us.
  
• Why The Banking Elite Want Riots in America. Posted 2/11/2013. Every indication clearly suggests that authorities in the United States are preparing for widespread civil unrest. The signs: NDAA legislation, The DHS spying on social media. The NSA building hug spy center in Utah. Preparing drones for the U.S. The DHS purchased over 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition in the last 10 months. At the height of combat operations in Iraq, the U.S. Army only used 5.5 million bullets a month. Why has the DHS stockpiled enough bullets for a 30 year war if it is not preparing for some form of domestic disorder?
• (CBSNews) Are robots hurting job growth?. Posted 1/13/2013. Quotes:
  • Percentage of Americans with jobs is at a 20-year low
  • Routine middle-skill jobs are being eliminated fastest
  • Software robots and physical robots replace wanted jobs
  • There are heavily automated warehouses where there are no human workers, right now
  • "You'd think the robots would run into each other but it never happens"
  • One robot saves 1.5 people
  • New Categories of jobs are in the sights of automation
  • eDiscovery replaces legal jobs
  • US manufacturing is making a comeback, but without the jobs
  • Investment in robots has increased 30% since the recession ended
  • Baxter costs $22,000 and can be trained in a matter of minutes
  • Baxter costs $22,000 and lasts 6,500 hours, about $3.40 per hour
  • Buying a robot is like hiring a Chinese worker
  • "Workers in China and India are more in the bulls-eye of the automation tidal-wave than the American worker"
  • Even if manufacturing returns to the US most of the jobs will go to robots
  • "Work as we currently think of it will be largely done by machines"
  • What people will do is the $64,000 question
    
    
• Pitched Currency War & USDollar Rejection. Posted 2/7/2013. The crux of the non-US$ trade vehicle devised as a USDollar alternative will be the Gold Trade Note. It will enable peer-to-peer payments to be completed from direct account transfers independent of currency, and most importantly, not done through the narrow pipes and channels controlled by the bankers with their omnipresent SWIFT code system among the world of banks. The Gold Trade Note will act much like a Letter of Credit, serve as a short-term bill, and maybe even push aside the near 0% short-term USTreasury Bills that litter the banking landscape....The new trade notes will involve posted gold as collateral, whose entire system for trade usage will bear a massive gold core that also will include silver and platinum, maybe other precious metals.
  
  The exit strategy for the US Federal Reserve might be extremely simple, enabled by the heavy Big Brother hand. Over $19 trillion in private pension funds in IRAs, 401ks, and Keoughs might be forced out of their current positions and dragged into a new special USGovt Bond that is backed by unwanted USTBonds racked by QE storms and worthless USAgency Mortgage Bonds racked by lost collateral that the big US banks eagerly dumped on the USFed.
  
  
• Why “This Time Won’t Be Different” For Japan In Two Charts. Posted 2/6/2013. This epic difference is...that some 55.6% of all Japanese assets are in currency and deposits, compared to just 14.3% in the US. And this is where it all begins and ends.
• U.S. Mint Sells 8.2 Million Silver Eagles Over First 17 Days of 2013 Production!. Posted 2/6/2013. The Mint has now sold a whopping 8,173,500 silver eagles during a mere 17 business days in operation during 2013, nearly 25% of the entire annual sales for 2012 of 33 million!
• (YouTube) Economics in One Lesson XIII: Government Price Fixing. Posted 10/20/2011. The problems with price fixing from economic terms. Learn all you need to know in 5 minutes.
• Women in Combat. Posted 2/5/2013. The minimum requirement for 17- to 21-year-old males is 35 pushups, 47 situps and a two-mile run in 16 minutes, 36 seconds or less. For females of the same age, the minimum requirement is 13 pushups, 47 situps and a 19:42 two-mile run. Why the difference in fitness requirements? "USMC Women in the Service Restrictions Review" found that women, on average, have 20 percent lower aerobic power, 40 percent lower muscle strength, 47 percent less lifting strength and 26 percent slower marching speed than men.
• Virginia Wants to Mint Its Own Coins. Posted 2/5/2013. Virginia's House of Delegates agreed yesterday to set up a $17,000 panel to explore the move, reports the Washington Post. The Virginian-Pilot sees the measure by Republican Bob Marshall as a "conservative shout-out," but Marshall insists he's serious. Here is Marshall's bill.
• China Imports Record Amount Of Gold In December On Price Drop. Posted 2/5/2013. This means that for all of 2012, total China imports of gold have hit a staggering 834.5 tons, double the 431 tons in 2011, and that the PBOC's determination, whose official holdings are still a laughable 1054 tons, when in reality they are likely 3-4 times greater, to convert to a commodity-backed currency the day it decides to become the world's reserves currency, as we predicted back in 2011, is as steadfast as ever. Recall from the December 2009 edition of China Youth Daily, which we reported previously that State Council advisor Ji was saying "that a team of experts from Beijing and Shanghai have set up a "task force" last year to consider growing China's gold reserves. "We suggested that China's gold reserves should reach 6,000 tons in the next 3-5 years and perhaps 10,000 tons in 8-10 years," the paper quoted him."
• Argentina Freezes Supermarket Prices To Halt Soaring Inflation; Chaos To Follow. Posted 2/4/2013. Summary: first capital controls, then a currency crisis, then expectations of sovereign default, then a rise in military tensions, and finally - price controls, after which all out chaos usually follows.Study this sequence well: it is coming to every "developed" country near you in the months and years ahead.
• (YouTube) Why Are Voters So Uninformed?. Posted 1/29/2013. It's completely rational to be uninformed about politics.
• The Financialization of Food & the Profitability of Poverty. Posted 1/29/2013.
• Understanding The Mortgage Payment Structure. Posted 9/23/2009. Before the creation of the modern mortgage program in 1934 (deep in the Great Depression), a 50% down payment was required to purchase a home. (Also, homes were generally paid off in a few short years.) The average home owner in the U.S. stays in a home for six years. The average home owner with a 30-year mortgage may think he or she will have a 20% equity stake after six year rather than the 14% they will actually have (assuming a 3% interest rate). They look at the low interest rate and think they're getting a good deal rather than the amortization schedule that determines how much equity they are actually buying at that rate. Halfway through a 30-year mortgage, the homeowner has only accumulated 39% equity in the home (again, assuming a 3% interest rate). Not surprisingly, this arrangement favors the banks.
• 1.8 gigapixel ARGUS-IS. World's highest resolution video surveillience platform by DARPA. This is probably what the drones will be used for over the U.S.
• Nassim Taleb Talks Antifragile, Libertarianism, and Capitalism's Genius for Failure. Posted 1/20/2013. A lot of interesting ideas in this interview. For example, we don't need to grow an economy on debt--debt has systemic consequences while equity does not. Debt has traditionally blown up systems (debt jubilees) and has been used to wage war. Equity was used throughout history to start ventures. Capitalism is allowing people to make mistakes or being responsible for their mistakes. The bigger the scope of government (i.e. nation-states versus city-states), the bigger the probability of making big mistakes and being wiped out. "Small governments love commerce and large governments love war."
• An Inside Look At The World's Biggest And Most Successful "Beta" Hedge Fund. Posted 1/23/2013. This is an important insight. While there are thousands of investment products, there are only three moving parts in any of them. Consider buying a conventional mutual fund. The investment may be marketed as a ‘large cap growth fund.’ The reality is that the return of that product, or any product, is a function of a) the return on cash b) the excess return of a market (beta) above the cash rate and c) the ‘tilts’ or manager stock selection (alpha). The mutual fund blurs the distinction between the moving parts, which makes it hard to accurately assess the attributes of any one part or the whole. In summary: return = cash + beta + alpha.
  
  Here is an article attempting to mimic the Bridgewater strategy using various funds: Bridgewater's All Weather Portfolio Vs. Harry Browne's Permanent Portfolio and All Weather Portfolio Construction. Basically, the concept deals with the possible four corner economic cycles: GROWTH (Rising): Stocks, High-Yield Bonds, and Convertibles; INFLATION (Rising): TIPS, Gold, Commodities; DEFLATION (Falling): Bonds; SAFE HARBOR: Cash, Short-Term Bonds. Here is a discussion on the strategy: Bogleheads Forum: Bridgewater's All Weather Portfolio
  
  Ray Dalio's key points:
  • Investors should setup an all weather portfolios, assuming that you don’t know what the future is going to hold.
  • The all weather portfolio should cover two scenarios: growth and inflation
  • How stocks and bonds perform in the growth and inflation scenarios: When growth is slower-than-expected, stocks go down. When inflation is higher-than-expected, bonds go down. When inflation is lower-than-expected, bonds go up.
  • So the weather portfolio should consist of have four different portfolios essentially that make up your entire portfolio that gets you balanced. Because in every generation, there is some period of time, there’s a ruinous asset class, that will destroy wealth and you don’t know which one that will be in your life time.
    
    
• Big Banks Are Breaking the Poor for Food Profits. Posted 1/23/2013. Global food prices have more than doubled since 2003 and volatility is through the roof. While some of the changes can be attributed to droughts, inflation or ethanol production, new studies are placing a majority of the blame squarely on financial profiteering by large firms such as Goldman Sachs. A report from the World Development Movement estimates the company collected $400 million of profits in 2012 as a result of out-sized futures contracts.
• 15 Ton Gold Repatriation Hits JP Morgan London Vaults. Posted 1/23/2013. If you look back through time at inflationary crises—from ancient Rome, to Ming China, to revolutionary France and America or to Weimar Germany—you'll find that uncontrolled inflations are caused by overleveraged governments which resorted to printing as the easiest way to avoid explicit default (whereas inflation is merely an implicit default). Some argue that equities hedge against inflation because they are a claim on real assets, but most of the great bear market troughs of the 20th century occurred during inflationary periods. A more obvious inflation hedge is inflation linked bonds, but governments can default on these too. More exotic insurance products like sovereign CDSs, inflation caps, long-dated swaptions or upside yield curve volatility all have their intuitive merits. But they all come with counterparty risk. Physical gold doesn’t. Indeed, during the “6000 year gold bubble” no one has defaulted on gold. It is the one insurance policy which will pay out when you really need it to.
• Silver Bars Being Secured By HSBC – Buy $876 Million Worth From Poland. Posted 1/23/2013. HSBC has secured another deal to buy silver bars from KGHM which brings their total purchases of silver from KGHM alone in the last 12 months to $876 million or PLN 3.65 billion. KGHM is one of the largest producers of silver in the world and is the second-largest producer of refined silver in the world.
• (YouTube) Dirty Wars: Jeremy Scahill & Rick Rowley's New Film Exposes Hidden Truths of Covert U.S. Warfare 1/2. Posted 1/23/2013.
• (Yahoo: MarketTicker) Central Banks Repatriate Gold: How Will This Affect Investors? Posted 1/23/2013. Interview with Jim Rickards.
• The Real Housing Recovery Story. Posted 1/22/2013. Currently, there are still more than 25% of homeowners underwater which limits their ability to move, refinance or sell their homes. However, as prices rise, there are two issues that begin to attack the housing story: 1) As prices reach levels where underwater homeowners can sell they will likely do so out of a psychology need to escape the "trap," which will bring a large supply of homes back onto the market, and; 2) rising prices will eventually erode the profitability of buying homes for rentals which will bring the speculative frenzy that has been the driver of the recent recovery to a halt.
• (YouTube) The Fundamentals for Owning Silver in 2013. Posted 1/22/2013. Duration: 1:31. Short and sweet. Silver is more rare than gold. Above ground today is around 1 billion ounces compared to 1950 (10 billion ounces) and 1980 (3.5 billion ounces). Compared this to gold where above ground inventory in 1950 was 1 billion oz. and today it is about 6 billion oz. Yet, the demand in dollar terms for both gold and silver are equal--that is, demand is 50:1 in favor of silver. On the mining side: Silver is mined at around 1 billion oz. and gold at around 100 million oz. or a ratio of 10:1.
• Uncovered, the 'toxic' gene hiding in GM crops: Revelation throws new doubt over safety of foods. Posted 1/22/2013. A new study by the EU's official food watchdog, the European Food Safety Authority(EFSA), has revealed that the international approval process for GM crops failed to identify the gene. Highlights: 54 of the 86 GM plants approved contain the dangerous gene. Gene found in food for farm animals producing meat, milk and eggs.
• Shock Claim: “The New Litmus Test Of Leadership In The Military Is If They Will Fire On US Citizens Or Not”. Posted 1/22/2013.
• The One Chart That Explains the Massive Risk of Investing in Gold & Gold Stocks. Posted 1/22/2013. S&P500 has essentially been flat over the last 10 years. Gold and Gold Stocks have gone up 5 and 10-fold over the same time period.
• Phil Mickelson and Glenn Beck get it. Posted 1/22/2013. The popular media personality, Glenn Beck, has recently announced that he is planning a $2 billion libertarian community somewhere in Texas that will generate its own power and grow its own food.
• 37 Statistics Which Show How Four Years Of Obama Have Wrecked The U.S. Economy. Posted 1/21/2013.
1. When Obama was inaugurated in January 2009, the number of SNAP (i.e. food stamps or Supplemental Assistance Nutrition Program) recipients was 31,939,110. By October 2012, the latest month reported, they had jumped to 47,525,329.
2. The number of Americans receiving money directly from the federal government each month has grown from 94 million in the year 2000 to more than 128 million today.
3. When Barack Obama first entered the White House, 60.6 percent of all working age Americans had a job. Today, only 58.6 percent of all working age Americans have a job. Also, although the unemployment rate is officially 7.8 percent (U3), the real rate is somewhere between 15% (Broadest, U6) and 23% (SGS Alternate U6) depending on what numbers you are looking at.
4. Median household income in America has fallen for four consecutive years. Overall, it has declined by over $4000 during that time span.
5. Approximately 53 percent of all U.S. college graduates under the age of 25 were either unemployed or underemployed in 2011.
6. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the United States lost 2.7 million jobs to China from 2001 to 2010.
7. The United States has fallen in the global economic competitiveness rankings compiled by the World Economic Forum for four years in a row. The United States is now in 7th place. It was number 1 in 2008.
8. According to the World Bank, U.S. GDP accounted for 31.8 percent of all global economic activity in 2001. That number declined steadily over the course of the next decade and was only at 21.6 percent in 2011. From almost a 1/3 of world GDP to only 1/5 of world GDP.
9. For the first time ever, more than a million public school students in the United States are homeless. That number has risen by 57 percent since the 2006-2007 school year.
10. Families that have a head of household under the age of 30 now have a poverty rate of 37 percent.
11. Health insurance costs have risen by 29 percent since Barack Obama became president.
12. The total amount of money that the federal government gives directly to the American people has grown by 32 percent since Barack Obama became president.
13. The U.S. government has run a budget deficit of well over a trillion dollars every single year under Barack Obama.
14. During Obama's first term, the federal government accumulated more debt than it did under the first 42 U.S presidents combined.
• (YouTube) Rich Pickings: Goldman Sachs cashes in, world on brink of food crisis. Posted 1/21/2013.
• Central banks: flush with paper money; low on real money. Posted 1/21/2013. Includes James Turk's Gold Money Index. "Plug both these figures into the Gold Money Index formula ($10,778,740,000,000 of currency divided by 31,575 tonnes of gold) and you arrive at a fair price of $10,617 per ounce."
• (YouTube) Anarchast Ep. 52 with James Turk. Posted 1/17/2013. Good long interview with James Turk. Deep in the interview Mr. Turk changes his prediction on gold to reach $11,000 instead of his previously predicted $8,000 several years ago.
• This Exploding Grenade Will Create A Gold & Silver Surge. Posted 1/21/2013. By Michael Pento. Goes into detail (in layman's terms) on the Japanese debt time bomb.
• The Return of Silver Eagle Rationing. Posted 1/18/2013.
• (YouTube) 11 Silver Flashpoints. Posted 1/18/2013.
  1. Physical redemption. Prices skyrocket.
  2. Procrastination buyers jump in. Currently, less than 1% of the population is invested in silver. What will happen when 15% of the population seeks to invest in silver?
  3. Silver retailers sellout.
  4. Smart silver retailers shut doors.
  5. Momentum monkeys smell blood. They will drive up the price.
  6. JP Morgan - The Ultimate Silver Buyer? JPM will reverse position and become the leading buyer.
  7. Institutional sellers stop supply of silver. They will no longer sell.
  8. Miners hold onto physical silver. They keep it as an investment or as profits from other mining metals.
  9. Corporate panic buying, especially those who use silver in their products.
  10. Nationalizations. China has essentially nationalzed its gold and silver mining. Other nations will do the same.
  11. The anti-hegemon makes its move. China, Russia and other countries will have the upper hand.
      
      
• Kyle Bass: Japan's 'Debt Time Bomb' Tell. Posted 1/18/2013. In 18 to 24 months the Japenese bond market will detonate. Approximately 20% ($340 billion) of Japanese exports go to China and China is rapidly reducing this as a result of tensions between them. Japan's GDP is dropping at an alarming rate and exports are collapsing.
• (Fox Business) David Stockman on Entitlement Reform. Posted 1/17/2013. Excellent solution to the U.S. budget deficit.
• Is Ted Butler's Silver Panic Imminent? Apple Contractor Claims New iMac Production Delayed Over Silver Shortage!. Posted 1/18/2013.
• US Mint Temporarily Sold Out of 2013 Silver Eagles. Posted 1/17/2013. The United States Mint has informed authorized purchasers that 2013 American Silver Eagle bullion coins are temporarily sold out. This follows intense demand for the silver bullion coins since the initial release on January 7, 2013. On the first day of availability for 2013-dated Silver Eagles, authorized purchasers had placed orders for 3,937,000 of the one ounce coins. This seemed to mark the highest one-day sales in the entire history of the program.
• Shelter from The Coming Storm – Gold, Silver, and Real Assets. Posted 1/17/2013.
  • A hurricane of digital money created by central banks to purchase government debt and other dodgy assets from banks.
  • A tidal wave of deficit spending by governments around the world.
  • A perfect storm of derivatives.
  • A tornado of bailouts, giveaways, loans, and currency swaps from the Federal Reserve.
  • An approaching thunderstorm of new and higher taxes.
  • A tsunami of Japanese Yen.
• Three things to watch in 2013. Posted 1/17/2013. (1) The yield on the 10-year T-note climbs above 2%. (2) The gold/silver ratio falls below 50. (3) The Federal Reserve balance sheet starts growing. My expectation for 2013 is that gold will probably rise at least 20%. Silver will also do better than its 12-year average of 20.1% per annum. I’m not going to try predicting how high silver will rise. Rather, I will just re-affirm my longstanding expectation that when silver finally clears resistance around $36-$37, it will jump to $68-$70 in 2-to-3 months. Its inevitable breakout above $50 will mean that silver has entered the second stage of its bull market.
• The Really, Really Big Picture. Posted 1/16/2013. There isn't going to be enough net energy for the economic growth we want.
• Why the Innovation Premium Is Diminishing. Posted 1/16/2013. The price and features offered by the innovator and its competitors will converge much faster than in previous eras. From one point of view, the recent weakness in Apple shares may reflect this trend: Apple's ability to charge a high premium is degrading faster than many expected.
• Why The Silver Manipulation MUST End by Ted Butler. Posted 1/16/2013. There is far less above ground silver in the world than there was 25 or 75 years ago. Twenty five years ago, there was close to three billion oz in silver bullion inventories and seventy five years ago there was ten billion oz. Today, there’s only a bit over one billion ounces.
• Bernanke Playing With Fire-Laurence Kotlikoff. Posted 1/16/2013. Dr. Kotlikoff says, “The situation is getting worse and worse and worse. We are running a massive six decade Ponzi scheme, and it’s coming to a real threatening point.” Dr.Kotlikoff calculates the real government deficit is enormous and it’s growing exponentially. “It’s $222 trillion. Last year it was $211 trillion. We grew the deficit by $11 trillion in one year,” charges Dr. Kotlikoff.
• Breaking News: OMFIF Report Advocates the Official Remonetization of Gold. Posted 1/14/2013. In a report published today, the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF), a global organization of central banks and sovereign wealth funds, recommends that gold be remonetized for use as international money, alongside major currencies....Globally, interest rates may now be on the way up. Dollars, euros, yen, sterling, etc, will now need to compete more directly with gold for use not only as reserves but as actual international money to be used to settle international balance of payments transactions between countries.
• Price Inflation Prompted Stampede into Silver and Gold Presaged by Warburg Sale. Posted 1/14/2013. When the number of committed opinion holders is below 10 percent, there is no visible progress in the spread of ideas. It would literally take the amount of time comparable to the age of the universe for this size group to reach the majority. Once that number grows above 10 percent, the idea spreads like flame. Kyle Bass interview referenced: (YouTube) AC2012 The Engtanglement KB. Also listen to Kyle Bass on Japan: (YouTube) UVIC 2012: A Conversation with Kyle Bass.
• Greeks Raid Forests In Search Of Wood To Heat Homes. Posted 1/14/2013.
• Putting The Near-Record Equity Inflow In Context. Posted 1/14/2013. In the first week of the year (2013) there was a massive, $22 billion allocation to equities, second only to the $23 billion dumped into equity funds in the third week of September 2007. What happened the first time we such such an epic injection? Answer: A steady decline lasting a year to the crash of September 2008.
• It Begins: Bundesbank To Commence Repatriating Gold From New York Fed. Posted 1/14/2013. German Handelsblatt reports in an exclusive that the long suffering German gold, all official 3,396 tons of it, is about to be moved. In brief: this is a momentous development, one which may signify that the regime of mutual assured and very much telegraphed - because if the central banks don't have faith in one another, why should anyone else? - trust in central banks by other central banks is ending.
• Food-Price Crisis Signals Imminent Hyperinflation. Posted 1/14/2013. The Western Agriculture Model based on (direct and indirect) farm subsidies and devaluing "money". This results in a (worldwide) collapse of food inventories. There’s still one final dimension of insanity to the subsidy-distorted global food production model. In our modern world, dominated by Western agricultural corporations shipping their products (literally) halfway around the world; roughly ¼ of the global food supply spoils in transit. Obviously without massive Western subsidization, much more of the global food supply would be grown locally. If that were to happen, the percentage of global food production wasted by spoilage in transit would be sure to plummet. Instead, we have the Western Agriculture Model. Countless millions of small farmers bankrupted, and doomed to poverty and/or slavery. Insane/dangerous over-concentration of agricultural production in Western (corporate) agricultural production. An unbelievable percentage of total, global food production completely wasted – as a direct result of Western agricultural imperialism. At the end of it all: the collapse of the global food supply; a massive, global food-supply crisis; and a resulting price-shock for food prices which will doom countless millions to starvation. And after all of that, the bankers’ worthless Western currencies are still certain to plummet to zero via the ensuing hyperinflation.
• High gold prices push India's farmers toward silver. Posted 1/11/2013. In some parts of India, they are buying more silver than gold in dollar amount.
• A Record $220 Billion "Deposit" Injection To Kick Start To The 2013 Market. Posted 1/10/2013. The article shows that excess reserves deposited into banks either by the public or the Fed is being used by banks to buy stocks. Thus, there is *no* sideline money sitting in the banks. The banks have allocated it into investments. "...money sitting in deposits is used by the banks to ramp the market, courtesy of the unwind of Glass-Steagall."
• (CNBC) Jim Grant Exposes “The Bureau Of Money Materialization” And A Submerging America. Posted 1/10/2013. Our fiscal problems are enormous and yet the Federal Reserve, that is "The Bureau of Money Materialization," can print money (materialize dollars on a screen), removing the fiscal constraint too; so what we have is a fiscal problem when the underlying problem is monetary. With the decidely un-Hamiltonian Lew now in charge and a hyprocritical 'bewailing the debt' Obama now wanting no limits, our future is in the hands of foreigners he warns - and the debt markets will only react when they grasp exactly how big a trillion really is.
• Inflation Propaganda Exposed. Posted 1/10/2013. Peter Schiff shows how distorted (under-reporting) the CPI numbers are over the last 10 years. Basically, the government is lying to us. See video: (YouTube) Inflation Propaganda Exposed.
• (YouTube) Leonard Cohen - Everybody Knows (Lyrics). Cynical view of the world as we know it. Written in 1988 but still relevant today. This blog describes the history behind the words: Everybody Knows.
• They Are Getting Ready: “No Obvious Reason” For Why China Is Massively Boosting Stockpiles of Rice, Iron Ore, Precious Metals, Dry Milk. Posted 1/9/2013. If a 400% year-over-year increase in rice stockpiles isn’t enough to convince you the Chinese are preparing for a significant near-term event, consider that in Australia the country’s two major baby formula distributors have reported they are unable to keep up with demand for their dry milk formula products. Grocery stores throughout the country have been left empty of the essential infant staple as a result of bulk exports by the Chinese.
• Like Spain, The Fed & Treasury Will Pull Out Nuclear Option & Raid Private Pension Funds. Posted 1/9/2013. If the federal government ever had a failed bond auction the Fed and Treasury are very likely to pull out the nuclear option. They will raid our private pension funds, just like Spain. They may even take foreign pensions invested in domestic funds. That’s also on the table. This $6-8 trillion pool of private IRAs and 401Ks is the only large source of funds left outside the MMAs multi trillion dollar pools. The owners of the IRAs will be compelled, first slowly and then more rapidly, to move their hard earned monies into GRAs or other annuity funds. They will be taken under the guise of Fairness, Duty and Patriotic necessities. The NDAA is just the mechanism to provide legal cover. The law is set. Once the trigger is pulled it will be too late to stop this theft.
  
  The removal of pension funds is now established policy in Europe. On January 4, 2013, the Wall Street Journal reported that Spain is draining the fund that backs their pensions. Spain holds about $86 billion in pension funds. It’s quietly removing the richest source of money, called the Social Security Reserve Fund, to handle present obligations. 90% of this $86 billion has been siphoned off to date, sometimes in $3 billion amounts.
  
  As Spain raids the Reserve funds set aside for pension payments in order to stopgap and fill large budget deficits, the 5% bonds are destined to assume Greek-like devaluation. For examples of other countries who have looted pension funds we need look no further than Argentina, where the government expropriated $30 billion to pay for government overhead. Portugal took $6.9 billion in private pensions the year before. Spain’s removal of this $75-80 billion may be the largest of its type in modern history but it will not be the last. It is a virtual certainty that when Spain’s financial difficulties come to a head, and they are getting worse, not better, the pension recipients will see a 50% drop in their income, just like the Greek pension haircuts.
  
  
• If Just 1% Of Japanese Pension Assets Shift Into Gold, The Gold Market Would Explode. Posted 1/8/2013. It looks like Japanese pension funds will start buying gold in sizeable quantities in the coming years.
• I Promise I Will Rob You a Little Less Than The Others. Posted 1/8/2013. Some 5,000 super-rich Frenchmen have left France, due to the high taxes. The most notorious of which is famed French actor Gerard Depardieu.
• Punk Economics 7: The Global Food Economy. Posted 1/7/2013.
• Secrets and Lies of the Bailout. Posted 1/4/2013. It was all a lie – one of the biggest and most elaborate falsehoods ever sold to the American people...The public has been lied to so shamelessly and so often in the course of the past four years that the failure to tell the truth to the general populace has become a kind of baked-in, official feature of the financial rescue.
• "The Magic Of Compounding" - The Impact Of 1% Change In Rates On Total 2022 US Debt. Posted 1/6/2013. Expects a $34.1 trillion debt in 2022 with a 3% blended cash interest for the duration. If it jumped to the long term historical average of 5%, it would push the 2022 debt to $40 trillion, or approximately 217% of GDP which is just shy of where Japan is now. The U.S. debt is on track to double from $16 trillion to $32 trillion in either 9 years (at 3% interest) or 7 years (at 5% interest).
• Why QE Will Never End. Posted 1/6/2013. Again, for fiscal 2011, the interest on the U.S. national debt was $454B. This is at an average coupon of around 3% and an average maturity of under 5 years. So, with a funding cost of 3%, the interest on the national debt was roughly 1/3 of the 2012 deficit. Aha, but what would the funding cost be if rates were 6% instead? The interest on the debt would have been $900B and the total deficit would have approached $2T! And this is why QE-Infinity exists and why it will never end. QE will not be ending in 2013. It will not be ending in 2014 and it will not be ending in 2015. It can't and it won't. The only option for the Fed and TPTB is to "extend and pretend". Extend the Great Ponzi as long as possible by pretending that there is adequate demand for treasuries to keep rates low.
• No - Americans, Paradoxically, Do Trust The Big Banks. Posted 1/3/2013. The truth is, that as of December 18, there was a record $9.2 trillion in total bank deposits: this is not only the evil 1%-ers money, but money from mom and pops - the public - who have saved cash all their lives, the bulk of it from hard work, and instead of keeping it in cash have decided to hand it over to the banks for "safe keeping." In other words, so explicit is the trust in banks and stability of the Fed-backstopped banking system that a whopping $2 trillion in excess deposits over loans have been parked at US banks.
  
  Which brings us to the jist of the story: on one hand, the public may be disenchanted with the US banking system, but on the other, the explicit trust has never been greater. And therein lies the rub: should this trust evaporate, and should deposits be pulled for whatever reason, not only will banks be forced to unwind a myriad in risk positions they likely still have on, but the sudden increase of what even the Fed would have to admit is M1 would result in an explosion in the prices of goods and services as suddenly three dollars are chasing what previously there was only one dollar in demand for.
  
  
• Hyperinflation 201. Posted 1/3/2013. Mathematically the Treasury is broke. They can never tax enough or cut spending enough to actually pay back lenders with current Dollars. The Treasury has simply borrowed and guaranteed too much to ever be repaid in current Dollars. The ONLY way to make payment is to print more which is another way of saying that the only way to make payment is to BORROW more.
• Euros discarded as impoverished Greeks resort to bartering. Posted 1/2/2013. Communities set up local currencies and exchange networks in attempt to beat the economic crisis. Also see Gold & Underground Economy. As Rome debased its currency, a two-tier economy emerged. Not even the government would accept its own money back for taxes. They imposed taxes in bullion terms so the coinage had to be melted down to pay your taxes. Taxes were also imposed “in kind” whereby they just came and took possessions.
• Bill Gross On Bernanke's Latest Helicopter Flyover, "Money For Nothing, Debt For Free" And The End Of Ponzi Schemes. Posted 1/3/2013. When the Fed buys $1 trillion worth of Treasuries and mortgages annually, as it is now doing, it effectively is financing 80% of the deficit for free.
• Gold & The Frightening Picture Of Our Financial Abyss. Posted 1/3/2013. Compares the Adjusted Monetary Base (from Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis) to the price of Gold since 1984. Shows the undervaluation of gold relative to the monetary base. It is clear that gold is nowhere near the overvaluation of the 1980s.
• (YouTube) The Battle of Athens: Restoring the Rule of Law. Posted 1/1/2013.

Historical log

• <<News log for 2012>>
• <<News log for 2011>>