With the recovery faltering less than two months before the November congressional elections, President Obama's economic team is considering another big dose of stimulus in the form of tax breaks for businesses - potentially worth hundreds of billions of dollars, according to two people familiar with the talks.
(Bloomberg) -- Charles Morris, a fund manager overseeing about $2.5 billion at HSBC Global Asset Management’s Absolute Return fund, talks about his decision to sell long-term bond holdings
When asked about the change in trading patterns for both gold and silver Turk noted, “The difference is that as this accumulation pattern developed, people were waiting weeks for pullbacks to develop, then they decided to buy pullbacks that developed over days. Now, at this point, the big money is buying pullbacks that develop over just hours.
Texas Rep. Ron Paul, suggesting America's reserves may not be as robust as officials claim, is calling for an independent audit of the U.S. gold held at Fort Knox and other facilities.
Almost two years ago the US Treasury was selling large amounts of short-term Treasury bills to fund bailouts and stimulus. That caused a major increase in debt. Most of that paper was 2-year bills and it is coming due for rollover shortly. While that transpires, October will report the annual fiscal deficit of 9/30/10 of about $1.5 trillion, a figure thought impossible just 1-1/2 to 2 years ago. This time around the Treasury will have to depend on the Fed and US banks and institutions to fund this mountain of paper. China has reduced its holdings of Treasury debt by about 6%, or by about $6 billion over ten months, or by about 10% or almost $100 billion over the past year or so. We know these figures are estimates because the Chinese government has the same trouble the US government has, it cannot discern truth from fiction.
Aug. 4 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. consumer bankruptcies, after rising 9 percent last month from June, might exceed 1.6 million this year, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute. In 2005, a record 2 million consumer bankruptcies were filed as people tried to eliminate their unsecured debt before the new law went into effect. The following year, 598,000 consumer cases were filed and the number has risen in each year since.
Right now, we are at a stage where Treasury bonds are as weakened as a termite-riddled house. They look fine: But they are well on their way to a complete collapse. Why? Because of the way they have been mishandled and mistreated by the Federal Reserve Board, and the U.S. Treasury. Whether by incompetence or by design, U.S. Treasury bonds have become the New & Improved Toxic Asset. The question is no longer if they will collapse—it’s when. Here's why. —Gonzalo Lira
In times of crisis people seek strong leaders and simple solutions. But what if their solutions are identical to the mistakes that caused the very crisis? This is the story of the greatest economic crisis of our age, the one that awaits us.
Gold bugs and naysayers alike take note. When the world's second largest and fastest growing economy liberalizes gold ownership by individuals, who happened to be the planet's most fastidious savers at a 17% rate, you better pay attention.
It is not clear if JPM will be exiting all markets at the same time including gold and silver in addition to other commodities. We will look for clarification from their official statement which has not yet been issued.
China has been buying record amounts of Japanese government debt because it is less risky than U.S. debt, at least in the short term, a Chinese government economist said on Wednesday.
Michael is a well-established specialist in the “Austrian School” of economics. He is a regular guest on CNBC, Bloomberg, Fox Business, and other national media outlets and his market analysis can be read in most major financial publications, including the Wall Street Journal.
WASHINGTON — Government anti-poverty programs that have grown to meet the needs of recession victims now serve a record one in six Americans and are continuing to expand.
The number of banks at risk of failing rose by 53 to 829, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said in its quarterly survey of the nation's banking system
Aug. 31 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. auto sales in August probably were the slowest for the month in 28 years as model-year closeout deals failed to entice consumers concerned the economy is worsening and they may lose their jobs.
FOXNY.COM - If you think you've been seeing more people sleep on city streets, statistics back up the perception. The homeless population living on New York City streets has gone up 50 percent in the past year,
Aug. 31 (Bloomberg) -- Investors are accumulating enough bullion to fill Switzerland’s vaults twice over as gold’s most- accurate forecasters say the longest rally in at least nine decades has further to go no matter what the economy holds.
Investors sometimes get caught up in the day to day and week to week movements in gold and silver. Don’t waste your time or energy on that, just accumulate. Standing in front of us is the greatest transfer of wealth in history. When the dust settles, those holding the gold will make the rules.
The world is getting "Fed up" with all these banker shenanigans, most want to sell their US dollar T-bonds and buy gold as an insurance policy. Look at what China, India, Russia and other countries are currently doing, they are converting their US dollars into tangible assets to protect their savings.
In the next decade, a rebirth of silver industrial demand, thanks to the emergence and growth of a number of new end uses, will join continued strong investment demand to push silver prices sharply higher with the white metal gaining not only against the dollar and other old world currencies but also outperforming gold.
So as the world drowns under trillions of excess debt, the IMF's solution is to throw quadrillions (or, technically, "as much as necessary") of new debt at the problem. And why not: when you have an out of control burning oil well, you nuke it (or so the legend says). And what works for geology surely works for unstable monetary systems, correct?For the specifics of the actual adjustments as part of today's "repackaging" the IMF provided the following summary:
Conclusion The long-term comparison of gold and other asset classes paints a clearly positive picture. While many ratios are close to the median, this goes to show that the current valuation is certainly not excessive. It is therefore also very easy to rebut the heavily cited argument of the “gold bubble”. Bull markets end in euphoria, and this substantiates our argument in favor of an imminent transition to an accelerated trend phase [- to somewhere between $3,000 and $10,400 per ounce for gold, between $75 and $650 per ounce for silver and in excess of $250 per barrel for crude oil.]
If you can still put a roof over your head and food on the table for your family, you should consider yourself to be very fortunate. There are millions of Americans out there right now that are really, really suffering. The cold, hard reality of it is that there aren't even close to enough jobs out there for everyone right now. It is almost as if we are all caught in a really bizarre game of musical chairs where the losers get stripped of their tickets to the middle class.
David Rosenberg, market guru, has officially declared that the US economy is in a state of depression, and he sees the economic superpowers woes worsening.
Rumors have circulated in China that People’s Bank of China (PBC) Gov. Zhou Xiaochuan may have left the country. The rumors appear to have started following reports on Aug. 28 which cited Ming Pao, a Hong Kong-based news agency, saying that because of an approximately $430 billion loss on U.S. Treasury bonds, the Chinese government may punish some individuals within the PBC, including Zhou. Although Ming Pao on Aug. 30 published a report on its website indicating that the prior report was fabricated by a mainland news site that had attributed the false information to Ming Pao, rumors of Zhou’s defection have spread around China intensively, and Zhou’s name has been blocked from Internet search engines in China.
Ben absolutely wants to do a massive QE2 program. The only thing holding him back is gold is near an all time high. What he wants is gold much lower and stocks much lower to give him cover... He is scared to do it here and he is right to be scared because such a reaction would be the end of the Fed right then and there. The Fed will be gone anyway within a few years in my opinion but it’s going to fight hard to survive and if you want to make money in this market you need to understand that. The most powerful institution in the world is fighting for its survival. Never forget that. So what is he going to do? I believe that the Fed and government are doing a lot more than people think to manipulate all markets behind the scenes. After all, they have publicly announced their manipulation in many other ways so does it make any sense whatsoever to assume they aren’t doing a plethora of other things behind the scenes? Of course not. I think that with the Fed in a bind they will accelerate and become ever more aggressive in behind the scenes games. This will make markets even more volatile and extraordinarily challenging. This is financial war make no mistake about it. The only way in my opinion to survive this is to buy all dips in precious metals, agriculture and oil. It is in these three areas that I expect to see the most price inflation as money eventually figures out the end game. The end game is more and more people will eventually wake up to the fact that the markets are a hologram put in front of you by the magicians at the Fed. That what constitutes real wealth in the years ahead will be owning food, energy and a means of exchange that will be accepted should a black market economy arise as it has in virtually all nations at one time or another throughout history. - Michael Krieger
"Twenty countries (including America) are headed into bankruptcy and more will follow. That brings up the subject of state debt in the US. America has been in an inflationary depression for 18 months. States have been cutting back for two years," but still face huge budget gaps required to be closed....2011 will be a terrible year (with) 80% of states expect(ing) deficits of more than $200 billion. 2012 looks even worse." Most worrisome, "there is no recovery and there never has been....the US economy and financial system is comatose." The worst is yet to come and will hit hard on arrival.
Aug. 27 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. economic data are “alarming,” signaling the recovery is losing momentum, Mohamed A. El-Erian, Pacific Investment Management Co.’s chief executive officer, wrote in an opinion piece in the Washington Post.
Aug. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Nouriel Roubini, the New York University professor who forecast the U.S. recession more than a year before it began, said the Federal Reserve is running out of effective ways to stimulate the economy.
Another concern associated with additional securities purchases is that substantial further expansions of the balance sheet could reduce public confidence in the Fed's ability to execute a smooth exit from its accommodative policies at the appropriate time. Even if unjustified, such a reduction in confidence might lead to an undesired increase in inflation expectations.
Let's take something more middle of the road, and apply the same trough-to-peak percentage advance gold underwent in the 1970s. (I think there's a greater than 50/50 chance it does more than that, given the precarious nature of the U.S. dollar.) Gold rose from $35 in 1970 to $850 in 1980, a factor of 24.28. Our price bottomed in 2001 at $255.95; multiply that by 24.28 and you get a gold price of $6,214 per ounce.
A senior Washington intelligence source reported this morning that a serious fight has erupted inside the Federal Reserve over hyperinflation, and that people close to the Fed are going to be leaking details, which means the fight will intensify and become more public. He added that that fight is now erupting inside this week's annual Jackson Hole economic summit of the Fed, whose host, Thomas Hoenig of the Kansas City Fed, has publicly dissented from Bernanke's hyperinflationary decisions at each of the last eight meetings of the Federal Open Market Committee. And indeed, sources at that Jackson Hole gathering report that it is an extremely interesting one, especially its off-the-record discussions.
"The USGovt will devaluate the US$ by 50% overnight in the not too distant future. They need 11 days to do this. If they push it, they can do it in 6 days. So look for a long holiday weekend as an opportunity. The best time to do this is the Christmas / New Year time window.
A number of the world’s biggest banks have launched international roadshows promoting the use of the renminbi to corporate customers instead of the dollar for trade deals with China. We’re now capable of doing renminbi settlement in many parts of the world,” said Chris Lewis, HSBC’s head of trade for greater China. “All the other major international banks are frantically trying to do the same thing.”
"A second round of QE will likely put sharp downward pressure on the USD, to some degree versus the euro and other G10 currencies, with potential for a broader USD sell-off".
Following a slew of downbeat economic indicators, market expectations are growing that there will be more quantitative easing from the Fed before the end of the year. Under the radical scheme, also used in the UK last year, central banks pour money into buying assets such as government bonds from banks and the commercial sector, pumping more cash into the financial system and at the same time cutting market rates.
Why will commodities rise, while equities, real estate and other assets fall? In other words, if there is an old fashioned run on a currency—in this case, the dollar, the world’s reserve currency—why would people get out of the dollar into commodities only, rather than into equities and real estate and other assets? In this post, I’m going to address both of these issues.
Had a conversation with the erudite Jim Willie this morning. His sources tell him that the Chinese and Arabs are going after the gold and silver markets in London … with buying sprees every ten days. If so, the prices of gold and silver ought to go parabolic in the months ahead and probably much sooner. There is no way the LBMA crowd can cover their Ponzi-like fractional gold/silver exposure. If they have sold the same gold and silver to many multiples of parties, as we think they have, the LBMA bankers are going down … should the Arabs, Chinese, or anyone else be going after their physical holdings. They will be doomed. Jeff Christian will have to go into hiding.
(MarketWatch) -- In an all-out effort to get the economy moving again, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke may be getting ready to take his money-creating helicopter to a new altitude.
Aug. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Investors face defaults on government bonds given the burden of aging populations and the difficulty of increasing tax revenue, according to a Morgan Stanley executive director.
Our brief national encounter with optimism is now well and truly over. We have had the greatest fiscal and monetary stimulus in modern times. We have had a whole series of programs to pay people to buy cars, purchase homes, pay off their mortgages, weatherize their homes, and install solar paneling on their roofs. Yet the recovery remains feeble and the aftershocks of the post-bubble credit collapse are ongoing.
I'd like to make you a business offer. Seriously. This is a real offer. In fact, you really can't turn me down, as you'll come to understand in a moment... Here's the deal. You're going to start a business or expand the one you've got now. It doesn't really matter what you do or what you're going to do. I'll partner with you no matter whatbusiness you're in – as long as it's legal.
Like homeowners walking away from mortgaged houses that plummeted in value, some of the largest commercial-property owners are defaulting on debts and surrendering buildings worth less than their loans
Just Robbery Pure & Simple – The Auto IRA is the first step to grab and control your retirement assets and replace our private system with a forced, government controlled Social Security type program. In addition they will force much of your retirement funds into buying junk treasury bonds along with the Federal Reserve when the dollar/national debt crisis hits as billions of retirement funds become the buyer of last resort when the rest of the world are dumping dollars and treasury securities.
Ben Davies is CEO of Hinde Capital - Rising Star Ben Davies gives a tremendous interview on the recent action in the gold & silver markets and gives KWN listeners a sneak peak of what he expects for both metals going forward. Ben also discusses his most recent piece in more detail.
In 6:36 min. David Rosenberg, Gluskin Sheff & Associates chief economist, discusses his belief that we are in a depression despite the government's best efforts. Positive gross domestic product readings and other mildly hopeful signs are masking an ugly truth: The US economy is in a 1930's
"Things look really bad for the next 10 years,"; Nenner is also bullish on gold and silver over the longer term and expects the precious metals to start a new leg higher by the end of the year.
Spain is putting all its eggs into one basket, and if it carries on like this, we may start to see a lot of Basques and Catalans crowding into one exit.
Therefore, the inflation created by the Fed first gets concentrated in whatever asset it has chosen to purchase - before spreading throughout the economy.
This rate of growth is inconceivable, even if vastly more expensive sources of supply, such as the Canadian oil sands, were developed at breakneck speed. If China’s recent economic growth pace continues, it will surpass South Korea’s current per capita GDP shortly after 2020 – meaning that the world may be forced onto alternative energy sources much sooner than it realizes.
Russell Comment -- The question is -- will the Fed print or won't the Fed print? If the US economy remains weak and approaches actual deflation, I find it difficult to believe that the Fed will not print. Also, if dollars remain scarce, the fact of their scarcity will drive interest rates higher, something the Fed most definitely does not want. Therefore, I believe that the odds favor more "quantitative easing" (printing).
Today the weak economic data is causing dollar selling, because it's becoming crystal clear to folks, as ForexLive notes, that quantitative easing II is now a done deal. No more baby steps or holding the balance sheet steady. There's no excuse for the Fed Board of Governors to be have an unclear picture of the economy's direction anymore. And we may not have to wait for very long. Bernanke speaks this Friday at Jackson Hole, and you can figure he'll be revising that speech now until then with every bad data point that comes across to get exactly the right message to the market.
And he’s out. The blind mathematician behind the Hindenburg Omen (you remember, that’s the technical indicator that tells us a stock market crash is nigh) tells the Wall Street Journal he’s gotten out of stocks a little more than a week before September, when this crash is supposed to happen.
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- President Barack Obama should call for the resignation of both Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers, the head of the White House's national economic team, House Minority Leader John Boehner said Tuesday.
It won’t be commodity ETF’s, or derivatives—those will be dismissed (rightfully) as being even less safe than Treasuries. Unlike before the Fall of ’08, this go-around, people will pay attention to counterparty risk. So the run on commodities will be for actual, feel-it-’cause-it’s-there commodities. By the end of the day of this panic, commodities will have risen between 50% and 100%. By week’s end, we’re talking 150% to 250%. (My private guess is gold will be finessed, but silver will shoot up the most—to $100 an ounce within the week.)
In his latest weekly letter, John Hussman warns of an imminent and disorderly collapse of the US dollar, courtesy of Ben Bernanke's move towards more quantitative easing.
“Forget the official debt,” he tells Aaron in this clip. The “real” deficit - including non-budgetary items like unfunded liabilities of Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and the defense budget - is actually $202 trillion, the professor and author calculates; or 15 times the “official" numbers.
As the Sino-American showdown in the South China and Yellow Seas escalates into the gravest superpower clash since the Cold War, the United States cannot wisely rely on China to help fund its budget deficit for any longer.
Sonoma Valley Bank, Sonoma, CA, Los Padres Bank, Solvang, CA, Butte Community Bank, Chico, CA Pacific State Bank, Stockton, CA, ShoreBank, Chicago, IL, Imperial Savings & Loan Association, Martinsville , VA, Independent National Bank, Ocala, FL, Community National Bank of Bartow, Bartow, FL
The Russell opinion. It's the markets that are telling the real story, not the analysts or the government..Believe me if the stock market continues the way its been going (particularly if it crashes) it's going to scare the living hell out of America's consumers. If consumers freeze up, you're going to see all the deflation you want. So who to believe, the analysts and economist or the stock and bond markets?
While America's super-rich congratulate themselves on donating billions to charity, the rest of the country is worse off than ever. Long-term unemployment is rising and millions of Americans are struggling to survive. The gap between rich and poor is wider than ever and the middle class is disappearing.
The government knows that a BP bankruptcy would cause a giant financial meltdown that would probably make what happened in 2008 look tame. That is the reason I think the government is working so hard to protect BP.
Our Hinde Silver Trend model has reached a significant low that usually precedes a dynamic move. This move can be lower or higher but our other technical indicators signal a move higher is the most likely scenario.
In today’s shaky economy and jittery investment markets, investors may well find that their best moves are not discovering the next big thing or a fantastic value, but simply avoiding serious, and costly, mistakes. Here are ten of the most common mistakes we see investors making everyday, and how to avoid making them yourself.
California will be forced to issue IOUs to public workers and other creditors in lieu of cash in the next two months if a budget deadlock cannot be broken, the state’s financial controller has warned.
Wright County Eggs, the Iowa manufacturer of 320 million eggs that have been recalled nationwide, on Thursday revealed more brands and identification numbers for packages that may have been contaminated with salmonella. The recall includes many popular brands sold in California supermarkets. A full list of affected brands and identification numbers can be found at www.eggsafety.org.
No, there will be no double dip. It will be a lot worse. The world economy will soon go into an accelerated and precipitous decline which will make the 2007 to early 2009 downturn seem like a walk in the park. The world financial system has temporarily been on life support by trillions of printed dollars that governments call money. But the effect of this massive money printing is ephemeral since it is not possible to save a world economy built on worthless paper by creating more of the same. Nevertheless, governments will continue to print since this is the only remedy they know. Therefore, we are soon likely to enter a phase of money printing of a magnitude that the world has never experienced. But this will not save the Western World which is likely to go in to a decline lasting at least 20 years but most probably a lot longer.
This is a temporary situation. We will inevitably—and soon—hit the other side of the storm. At some point those trillions of dollars created by the U.S. government—and many other governments around the world have created trillions of currency units—are going to have an effect. When will that be? The timing is uncertain. But I think it's going to be soon.
The Federal Reserve may need to ramp up its purchases of U.S. Treasury debt if price levels in the U.S. economy continue to show signs of softening, St. Louis Fed President James Bullard said on Thursday.
Rising wage and production costs in China are eating into the profits of Western companies and may soon set off an exodus of multinational companies to cheaper locations.
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -The index of manufacturing activity in the Philadelphia region dropped sharply in August, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia reported Thursday. The Philly Fed diffusion index fell to negative 7.7 in August from 5.1 in July. This is the first negative reading in a year. The decline was unexpected.
Six hundred and fifty years ago came the climax of the worst financial collapse in history to date. The 1930’s Great Depression was a mild and brief episode, compared to the bank crash of the 1340’s, which decimated the human population.
The austerity measures that were supposed to fix Greece's problems are dragging down the country's economy. Stores are closing, tax revenues are falling and unemployment has hit an unbelievable 70 percent in some places. Frustrated workers are threatening to strike back.
Even though we've talked about this for years and we don't mean to sound like a broken record, but something very important is happening that you should be aware of…
The global gold market has been transformed over the past decade. Jewellery, for decades the backbone of gold consumption, has moved to the sidelines amid voracious demand from investors. Central banks, for years big sellers of bullion, have performed a radical U-turn and started to buy.
Sprott Asset Management's Chief Investment Strategist John Embry loves to talk gold. And we love to listen. We thought you might, too, because he's always long on opinion and predictions. John envisages that the "extraordinarily painful" economic times ahead will ultimately lead to a new currency backed by, of course, gold. In the meantime, John suggests you "protect yourself" from downside risk by shifting 25% of your portfolio to precious metals. In this exclusive interview with The Gold Report
Marc Faber is sticking to his guns on the inflation trade. While he’s nailed the equity trade at just about every point over the last few years his macro outlook with regards to inflation has been far less accurate. Nonetheless, Faber says there are already signs of inflation in food prices and maintains that U.S. government bonds are a very bad bet at these levels. Faber still loves gold:
In a move applauded by some local Muslims, the state government of Kelantan said it was introducing a new monetary system featuring standardised gold and silver coins based on the traditional dinar and dirham coins once used by the Ottoman Empire.
Much of what passes for “insider” information these days is often conspiracy-edged or largely conjecture. True inside information is actually hard to come by. So what follows is the refreshingly candid and uncut version of my talk with a first-hand participant in the murky and little-understood world of gold bullion, mints, and bullion dealers.
"We know the causes of bankruptcy are principally job losses and health care, with the overlay of the foreclosure crisis," said Deborah Thorne, an associate professor of sociology at Ohio University. "It feels very unsettled, and I'm not surprised the numbers are going up. Until we get our feet on the ground, provide decent-paying jobs, and do something with the housing crisis, bankruptcies will continue to go up."
A new report released by the University of Georgia and the Georgia Sea Grant states these claims are inaccurate. According to the scientists who compiled this study and have interpreted the National Incident Command's report, less than 10% of the oil is gone, and up to 90% remains a threat to Gulf ecosytems.
The Gulf of Mexico oil spill still poses threats to human health and seafood safety, according to a study published Monday by the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association.
From pollution to politics, the era of deception and duplicity has reached new heights and hijacked almost every form of media in the world. In the last frontiers for truth such as the internet, disinformation operations are in full swing to discredit and destroy any semblance of authentic and factual information available to the public.
The United States is running out of time to get its budget and trade deficits under control. Despite the urgency of the situation, 2010 has been wasted in hype about a non-existent recovery. As recently as August 2 Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner penned a New York Times column, “Welcome to the Recovery.”It is encouraging to see some realization that, this time, Washington cannot spend the economy out of recession. The deficits are already too large for the dollar to survive as reserve currency, and deficit spending cannot put Americans back to work in jobs that have been moved offshore.
"If they're going to do it that's the window that they have," Bolton declared. "Otherwise as I said before, once the rods are in the reactor, if you attack the reactor you're going to open it up and radiation will escape at least into the atmosphere and possibly into the waters of the Persian Gulf.
The delinquency rate on home equity loans is higher than all other types of consumer loans, including auto loans, boat loans, personal loans and even bank cards like Visa and MasterCard, according to the American Bankers Association.
Miller is bleak about his assessment of the situation. He pointed out toward the coast and said, "Everything is dead out there. The plankton is dead. We pulled up loads of dead plankton on our trip on Wednesday. There are very few birds. We saw only a few when there are usually thousands. We only saw two porpoises when there are usually countless. We saw nothing but death."
Aug. 16 (Bloomberg) -- China, whose $2.45 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves are the world’s largest, is turning bullish on Europe and Japan at the expense of the U.S.
Looking for some cheery Monday morning reading? Don't read the latest from Matterhorn Asset Management, whose latest letter newsletter is titled THERE WILL BE NO DOUBLE DIP (because it will be way, way worse). A lot of it is your standard anti-Fed, pro-gold, there's-too-much-debt doom mongering. However, the following reasons why the coming US economic period will be much worse than Japan's are interesting, since this has been the subject of so much discussion of late.
In 1963, Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz wrote a seminal piece on the Great Depression (A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960), parts of which have become accepted wisdom in monetary policy and theory ever since. Friedman and Schwartz's argument is that what turned a recession into a depression in the 1930s (where output dropped by 30% and unemployment rose to 25%) was a collapse of the money supply, as banks were forced to call in their inter-bank loans, creating a domino effect of collapsed banks and lost savings.
Several tons of gold imported into the UAE by traders and investors turned out to be fake on closer inspection, resulting in millions of dirhams in losses and high levels of stress to the victims.
Aug. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Have you read the U.S. Constitution recently, especially the part where We, the People, give Congress the power to levy and collect taxes?
Exchange Traded Funds – all of the risks and none of the rewards
ETFs should not be owned by serious professional investors
ETFs offer none of the benefits of physical bullion ownership
ETFs are no cheaper than owning physical allocated bullion stored and insured in secure vaults
ETFs are not as secure as owning physical allocated bullion either via a bullion fund or an allocated bullion account
ETFs provide no returns above the bullion price, only the likelihood of tracking at a discount or potentially failing to track the bullion price at all
ETFs do not provide 24 hour liquidity, unlike the bullion market itself
The esteemed Robert Shiller, the man behind the Case-Shiller housing index, is giving probably one of the most dire double-dip recession warnings we've heard yet.
Why is Gary still expecting deflation? Because consumers still have way too much debt, and this debt will take decades to work off. Also, consumers are saving money again, which means they aren't spending it. Banks have plenty of cash and reserves, but the demand for money just isn't there. And when consumers are strapped and credit is contracting, prices tend to fall.
Billions of dollars in U.S. rescue funds wound up in big banks in France, Germany and other nations. That was probably inevitable because of the structure of the Treasury Department's program, the Congressional Oversight Panel says in a new report issued Thursday. The U.S. program aimed to stabilize the financial system by injecting money into as many banks as possible, including those with substantial operations overseas.
State Controller John Chiang said Tuesday that without a state budget, California's government would be unable to pay its bills in late August (or maybe early September). That means issuing IOUs to some people. Possible dates for IOUs could be either Aug. 27 or Aug. 31, when big payments to schools are due, according to this schedule on the controller's website.
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- With deflation looking to be on the way, it's interesting to see gold rallying 1.5%, just as global stocks and some commodities such as crude oil sink on the realization that U.S. growth, and likely global growth as well, really is slowing.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- New applications for unemployment insurance rose last week to their highest level in almost six months, the latest evidence that some employers are still cutting their staffs.
Now that the US can't cut interest rates any lower, the only option left on the table is what the Fed just announced it would start doing -- buying Treasury debt. And that could lead the country to the brink of collapse: According to economists Carmen Reinhart & Ken Rogoff, whose views we share, crossing the 90% debt/GDP threshold is the equivalent of crossing the proverbial Rubicon of economic growth. It's a point from which it's almost impossible to return.
House members convened Tuesday and passed the multibillion-dollar bailout bill for cash-strapped states that provides $10 billion to school districts to rehire laid-off teachers, But the bill also requires that $12 billion be stripped from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as food stamps, to help fund the new bill, The federal assistance program currently helps FOURTY ONE MILLION AMERICANS.
The alternative to defrauded and counterfeited bonds is clearly GOLD. The badly deceived and ill-informed US public will figure it out, only when the GOLD price penetrates the $2000 level, or when the SILVER price penetrates the $50 level. Until then, GOLD shines with an insufficient crowd of advocates, afficionados, and lovers. The next big upleg will occur when the number of people on the GOLD/SILVER train is reduced to a minimum, using every crooked game and every false information possible. That day might be in the coming few weeks.
I write about major problems: the collapsing US economy, wars based on lies and deception, the police state based on “the war on terror” and other fabrications such as those orchestrated by corrupt police and prosecutors, who boost their performance reports by convicting the innocent, and so on. America is a very distressing place. The fact that so many Americans are taken in by the lies told by “their” government makes America all the more depressing.
The U.S. government spent itself deeper into the red last month, paying nearly $20 billion in interest on debt and an additional $9.8 billion to help unemployed Americans. Federal spending eclipsed revenue for the 22nd straight time, the Treasury Department said Wednesday. The $165.04 billion deficit, while a bit smaller than the $169.5 billion shortfall expected by economists polled by Dow Jones Newswires, was the second highest for the month on record. The highest was $180.68 billion in July 2009.
Thirty thousand people showed up to receive Section 8 housing applications in East Point Wednesday, suffering through hours in the hot sun, angry flare-ups in the crowd and lots of frustration and confusion for a chance to receive a government-subsidized apartment.
So in an all-out deflation, Robert Prechter will be sitting in all cash or US Federal Reserve notes. But the dollar is collapsing, and with a US that is deflating, none of our foreign creditors will want dollars (in fact, they will be trying to get rid of dollars). With fiat money in retreat all over the world -- and currencies devaluing against each other, the world's peoples will turn to the only money they can trust -- gold. I'm aware that Prechter believes gold will be heading down in a deflation, I disagree.
Aug. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who warned that unforeseen events can roil markets in “The Black Swan,” said he is “betting on the collapse of government bonds” and that investors should avoid stocks. The financial system is riskier that it was than before the 2008 crisis that led the U.S. economy to the worst contraction since the Great Depression, Taleb said.
The gap expanded $7.9 billion, the most since record- keeping began in 1992, to $49.9 billion in June, Commerce Department figures showed today in Washington.
Suren Thiru, an economist at Lloyds TSB, said: "Gold continues to maintain its position as the ultimate safe haven investment, against a backdrop of the debt problems in Europe and concerns over the prospects for economic growth and inflation. This is despite a weakening in its value over recent weeks.
The dollar has already entered its terminal phase. The word "doom" is written across it for anyone with the eyes to see. Sad to say, there is no way to reverse its downward slide. With more than $13 trillion in public debt and some $100 trillion in unfunded mandates, our federal government has assumed far more obligations than it can ever make good on. Worse still, these figures are growing larger every year.
WASHINGTON — Acknowledging that the recovery has slowed, the Federal Reserve on Tuesday announced that it would use the proceeds from its huge mortgage-bond portfolio to buy long-term Treasury securities. By buying government debt, the Fed is taking an unmistakable step to maintain the large amount of money that it pumped into the economy, starting in 2007, to prop up the financial and housing markets.
Republicans objected to raising some $10 billion by raising taxes on some U.S.-based multinational companies. Advocates for the poor were protesting a provision to accelerate the phasing out of an increase in food stamp payments implemented in last year's economic recovery bill. Under the measure, payments would return to pre-stimulus rates in 2014, saving almost $12 billion. James Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center, said that would be cutting benefits for some 40 million people now receiving food stamps. "Those families will be hungrier and less able to buy healthy diets," he said.
Richard Nixon's gold policies get Stockman's first assault, for defaulting "on American obligations under the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement to balance our accounts with the world." So for the past 40 years, America's been living "beyond our means as a nation" on "borrowed prosperity on an epic scale ... an outcome that Milton Friedman said could never happen when, in 1971, he persuaded President Nixon to unleash on the world paper dollars no longer redeemable in gold or other fixed monetary reserves."
Hot on China's heels, India's Central bank is mulling a proposal to allow banks to trade in gold. If cleared, the move will only strengthen the validity of the bull case for the metal.
The greatest loss of the last decade was not in 401-Ks or manufacturing jobs or foreclosed houses, but the rule of law. Without genuine rule of law, anything goes and nothing matters. As a consequence of that, finally, everything goes. The rule of law is what kept foreigners buying our debt all these years (the fumes we've been running on). They kept buying because they believed, when all was said and done, that Americans would enforce contracts and regulate behavior in the direction of fair dealing - not for it's own sake but because it made things work better. But when the rule of law goes here, the rest of the world will notice its absence. They'll stop believing in our money and our future. They'll cash out and we'll wash out. Then, as human tribes are wont, they may just turn around and kick our ass because we're down.
China’s Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi called Clinton’s remark “virtually an attack on China.” Today a Chinese general said in an editorial that U.S. plans to bring the USS George Washington to the Yellow Sea, situated between China’s coast and the Korean peninsula, may provoke economic retaliation.
The report concludes that the Federal Reserve Board’s intimate relations with the leading powers of Wall Street—the same banks that benefited most from the government’s massive bailout—influenced its strategic decisions on AIG. The panel accuses the Fed and the Treasury Department of brushing aside alternative approaches that would have saved tens of billions in public funds by making these same banks “share the pain.” Bailing out AIG effectively meant rescuing Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Merrill Lynch (as well as a dozens of European banks) from huge losses. Those financial institutions played the derivatives game with AIG, the esoteric practice of placing financial bets on future events. AIG lost its bets, which led to its collapse. But other gamblers—the counterparties in AIG’s derivative deals—were made whole on their bets, paid off 100 cents on the dollar. Taxpayers got stuck with the bill.
US nonfarm productivity dived 0.9% in Q2 vs 3.9% in Q1. The market was looking for growth of 0.1%.The culprit: higher labor prices! Are we seeing wage inflation with nearly 10% unemployment? It marks the first time that productivity went negative since q4 2008.
The Obama administration will begin tackling this dilemma next Tuesday at a public conference on the future of the mortgage system. Fannie and Freddie lost a combined $9 billion in the April-to-June quarter and have needed more than $148 billion to stay afloat since the government rescued them nearly two years ago.
The problem that nobody is talking about, yet everyone continues keeping a close eye on, namely the trillions in commercial real estate under water, is quietly starting to reemerge. In the attached letter from the Commercial Real Estate lobby, it reminds politicians that the hundreds of billions in loans that mature in the next several years won't roll on their own, and we see the first inkling of the lobby asking congress for much more taxpayer aid
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Silver is expected to remain bullish this week, supported by technical indicators, a weak dollar and weaker China economic data. The bearish pattern in the dollar will likely continue from the past week, but could be limited this week due to the Michigan confidence index, falling jobless claims, and rising retail sales. A weak dollar will continue to spur the demand for silver, along with the yellow metal. Silver could see some lively sessions this week on the Fed's decision to ease money supply, thus undermining confidence in the U.S. dollar.
This analysis is a continuation of the UK Debt Forecast article (UK ConLib Government to Use INFLATION Stealth Tax to Erode Value of Public Debt ) on the impact of the new coalition government having effectively hit the reset button on the UK economy to now primarily target a reduction in the £156 billion annual budget deficit which aims to suck £113 billion a year out of the economy by 2015-16 by means of swinging public sector spending cuts and tax rises. The government has now clearly reversed the Labour governments policy of continuous fiscal expansion and set the country on a course for severe fiscal contraction for at least the next 3 years.
August 9 (King World News) - Here's the best way to understand the dilemma and choices confronting the Fed at the FOMC meetings this week. We are experiencing a "natural" bout of deflation from the Depression and deleveraging. We are also experiencing "artificial" inflation from fiscal and monetary policy, ZIRP and QE. The natural deflation and artificial inflation are offsetting each other (so far) so that price indices are well behaved. But this is not price stability; it's a mask for the temporary stasis of the offsetting forces. Just because California is not shaking right now does not mean enormous stresses are not building below the surface and along the fault lines. The problem for the Fed is that the deflation is accelerating; this is what the bond market is telling us.
(Reuters) - The U.S. economy may sink perilously close to another slump, as cities and states cut jobs and curb spending to balance their recession-ravaged budgets.
Matthew Simmons, an international oil expert who most recently focused on developing renewable energy from the waters off Maine, died Sunday night of an apparent heart attack, his office is reporting. He was 67.
Martenson thinks we’re “dangerously close” to entering a stage of ‘stagflation’ that crippled the economy and market in the 1970s. “That really squeezes the workers even harder than any other condition you can experience," he says, because wages are stagnant while the price of goods and services rises.
The value of the US dollar is crashing intentionally as the Federal Reserve has been printing money without tangible reserves for several decades. President Barack Obama has helped the bankers to come out ahead in every possible situation while pushing the middle class into poverty.
"The U.S. is in an untenable position - between a rock and a hard place - in an inescapable debt trap - where the options are, at best, dire - either hyperinflation or a deflationary depression! It would seem that all we can do is ride out the storm in a boat laden with gold" said Jeff Nielson (BullionBullsCanada.com) in a recent speech* going on to say:
The Federal Reserve is set to downgrade its assessment of US economic prospects when it meets on Tuesday to discuss ways to reboot the flagging recovery.
The word Macondo, as in the Macondo well at the BP oil disaster, in Haitian means "the Devil's food".Gulf Stream and North Atlantic Current Dying Loop Current in Gulf of Mexico Already Dead Extreme heat/drought in Russia, Flooding in Asia, Killing Cold in South America All Connected To BP Oil Disaster
It is deflationary, acting as a transfer tax to petro-powers and the agro-bloc. It saps demand from the rest of the economy. If recovery is already losing steam in the US, Japan, Italy, and France as the OECD's leading indicators suggest - or stalling altogether as some fear - the Eurasian wheat crisis will merely give them an extra shove over the edge. Agflation may indeed be a headache for China and India, where economies have over-heated and food is a big part of the inflation index. But the West is another story.
The ongoing buildup of such imbalances, meanwhile, only makes the system increasingly vulnerable to shocks. It’s also a process that’s ultimately unsustainable for all, says the IMF.
A pair of articles in the NYT and the WSJ tonight offer a pretty good glimpse of the current conventional wisdom. The first, from the Times, is all about, what else, bonds! Everyone thinks they're going higher, including (naturally) Bill Gross, and nobody thinks rates will rise anytime soon. And then from The Journal -- the dollar is toast because the economy sucks, and The Fed is almost certainly going to loosen some more.
Nonfarm payrolls contract more significantly than forecast in July as job growth continues at a subdued pace. Private payrolls expand by 71,000 positions, while overall joblessness is unchanged at 9.5%.
The government is effectively bankrupt. Using GAAP accounting principles, the annual deficit is running in the range of $4 trillion to $5 trillion. That's beyond containment. The government can't cover it with taxes. They'd still be in deficit if they took 100% of personal income and corporate profits. They'd also still be in deficit if they cut every penny of government spending except for Social Security and Medicare. Washington lacks the will to slash its social programs severely, to change its approach to ever bigger government. The only option left going forward is for the government eventually to print the money for the obligations it cannot otherwise cover, which sets up a hyperinflation.
The economic crisis is just getting going. It's important to remember that the whole world has been in a long boom, punctuated by relatively minor recessions, since 1946. What's happening now is not just another cyclical recession. As it gets worse, and I'm quite confident it will, people will look for others to blame, and politicians will look for distractions to appease the masses. These factors are actively fanning the flames.
U.S. naval planners are scrambling to deal with what analysts say is a game-changing weapon being developed by China — an unprecedented carrier-killing missile called the Dong Feng 21D that could be launched from land with enough accuracy to penetrate the defenses of even the most advanced moving aircraft carrier at a distance of more than 1,500 kilometers (900 miles).
The greenback headed for a weekly decline against 15 of its 16 most-traded counterparts after Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz said the nation’s recovery is “anemic” and called for a second round of “better-designed” stimulus.
Christina Romer, chairwoman of Pres. Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, has decided to resign, according to a source familiar with her plans. Romer, an economics professor at the University of California (Berkeley) before taking the key admin post, did not respond to repeated calls to her office. "She has been frustrated," a source with insight into the WH economics team said. "She doesn't feel that she has a direct line to the president.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac own or guarantee more than half the $11 trillion U.S. residential debt market. The Treasury and Department of Housing and Urban Development asked in April for public comment on how to fix the mortgage-funding system.
Social Security will pay out more this year than it gets in payroll taxes, marking the first time since the program will be in the red since it was overhauled in 1983, according to the annual authoritative report released Thursday by the program's actuary.
WASHINGTON, Aug 5 (Reuters) - The U.S. Postal Service reported a quarterly net loss of $3.5 billion on Thursday and said it will likely have a cash shortfall going into 2011. The agency, which delivers nearly half the world's mail, has reported net losses in 14 of the last 16 fiscal quarters.
James Dines: You hear all kinds of guesses. There were only so many dinosaurs and ferns. It’s actually finite, and it is dirt inexpensive. Folks snivel at $1.67 for gasoline, but they pay $10/gallon for Gatorade. White-out is $25/gallon. Evian is $21/gallon. Pepto-Bismol is $123/gallon. People have no concept of how substantial oil is going to go. Oil is planning to go via the roof. A sound vitality portfolio must undoubtedly include some oils. But to me, the center with the chessboard is going to become uranium.
The 0% rate is stuck perhaps permanently. The monetization will resume in powerful form, again stuck perhaps permanently. The financial and monetary systems are broken and require permanent props and supports, a tragedy in progress without proper recognition. THEY ALL MEAN ONE THING CLEARLY: MUCH HIGHER GOLD PRICES DIRECTLY AHEAD!!!
WASHINGTON — The number of Americans who are receiving food stamps rose to a record 40.8 million in May as the jobless rate hovered near a 27-year high, the government reported yesterday.
Aug. 5 (Bloomberg) -- More Americans than projected filed applications for unemployment insurance last week, indicating employers kept cutting staff as the recovery showed signs of slowing.
U.S. consumer bankruptcies, after rising 9 percent last month from June, might exceed 1.6 million this year, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute.
NEW YORK -- The Senate overcame a key procedural hurdle Wednesday to send $26 billion more in federal aid to cash-strapped states. The measure, which passed by a 61-38 vote, contains $16.1 billion in additional Medicaid money and $10 billion to prevent layoffs of teachers and first responders.
NEW YORK—Speculation about further easing of U.S. monetary policy and the chance of an increase in Chinese demand Wednesday pushed gold futures to their highest levels in almost three weeks.
All of this is great, but taken together, these reforms fail to address even a tenth of the real problem. Worse: They fail to even define what the real problem is. Over a long year of feverish lobbying and brutally intense backroom negotiations, a group of D.C. insiders fought over a single question: Just how much of the truth about the financial crisis should we share with the public? Do we admit that control over the economy in the past dec ade was ceded to a small group of rapacious criminals who to this day are engaged in a mind- numbing campaign of theft on a global scale?
NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--The total outstanding notional amount for all interest rate derivative transactions reported by the 14 major dealers including Goldman Sachs & Co, Morgan Stanley and J.P.Morgan was $449.202 trillion as of June 30. The global data collection is a key element of efforts to bring more transparency to the derivatives markets that were at the heart of the financial crisis. Detailed reports are submitted monthly to regulators; public reports contain the aggregated data.
Wheat prices have staged the most drastic rise in more than 50 years, as a drought in Russia fuels growing worries that it could lead to a global shortage of the grain.
"We're not going into a double dip. We're going into a depression. I'm convinced of that," claims renowned Market Forecaster Ian Gordon. Using his sharpest tools, Gordon has determined that the biggest market crash in our lifetime is coming sooner than most expect. But he is using a three-pronged strategy to limit the damage and even make money in the dark times ahead. You will learn why Gordon believes gold, and gold equities in particular, will perform when nothing else does in this exclusive interview with The Gold Report.
It’s important you all understand what is the most likely scenario coming in the gold market. We are likely very near the end of the gold bull, but it is likely to be ended with a restoration of the gold standard, a process that will LOCK gold at quasi-permanently high prices. The public will be stunned at the coming size of the move UP in gold, and even more stunned at how impoverished that move makes them, which is the reason for the revaluation of gold,
Aug. 3 (Bloomberg) -- China, the world’s largest gold producer, will support overseas investment plans by “large- scale” bullion companies by backing them financially, the People’s Bank of China said. This is the first time the Chinese government has singled out bullion producers for financial support in overseas purchases. China “will place heavy emphasis on supporting large-scale gold producers in their development and overseas expansion plans,” the central bank said in the statement.
Aug. 3 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Treasuries fail to provide safety or liquidity when it comes to managing China’s $2.45 trillion foreign-exchange reserves, said Yu Yongding, a former central bank adviser. “I do not think U.S. Treasuries are safe in the medium-and long-run,” Yu, a member of the state-backed Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, wrote yesterday in an e-mailed response to questions. China is unable to sell the securities in a “big way” and a “scary trajectory” of budget deficits and a growing supply of U.S. dollars put their value at risk, he said.
China's air force begins a five-day exercise on Tuesday with fighter jets, spy planes and helicopters, state media said, against a backdrop of increased diplomatic and military tensions with Washington.
While it is true that a hyperinflation will wipe out debts, it will also wipe out the value of savings, loans, and fixed income. The wealth of the middle class of a country is generally wiped out. Society is reduced to two classes -- the haves and the have-nots.
The Steering Group of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) which consists of Phil Giraldi, former CIA (20 years), Larry Johnson, former CIA; DoS, (24 years), W. Patrick Lang, Col., USA, Special Forces (ret.); Director of HUMINT Collection, Defense Intelligence Agency (30 years), Ray McGovern, US Army Intelligence Officer, CIA (30 years), Coleen Rowley, FBI (24 years), and Ann Wright, Col., US Army Reserve (ret.), (29 years); Foreign Service Officer, Department of State (16 years), have penned a memo to the president in an attempt to alert him "to the likelihood that Israel will attack Iran as early as this month. This would likely lead to a wider war." Read on for the full memo by the activist group.
What will the Fed's reaction to all this be? My opinion is that the Bernanke Fed is becoming progressively more uncomfortable with the way the economy is going, and they are getting ready to pull out their "big anti-deflationary guns" in an other attempt to pre-empt deflation. The anti-deflation "guns" that the Fed manages are zero short rates, buying longer-term bonds and speeding up the money "printing presses."
A bill that would have provided a mere $26 billion -- and yes, we mean mere, because in the grand scheme of things, this is peanuts compared to both the deficit, the Federal budget, and what the states need -- is looking unlikely to pass the Senate, after a vote was delayed yesterday.
Both factory orders and pending home sales came in meaningfully below expectations, adding to the steady drip-drip-drip of bad macro data to counteract any good news from earnings season.
Today in the American Superpower, one of every six Americans is living on food stamps. The Great American Superpower, which is wasting trillions of dollars in pursuit of world hegemony, has 22% of its population unemployed and almost 17% of its population dependent on welfare in order to stay alive. The world has not witnessed such total failure of government since the final days of the Roman Empire. A handful of American oligarchs are becoming mega-billionaires while the rest of the country goes down the drain. And the American sheeple remain acquiescent.
The problem is, the eruption occurred on the side of the sun facing earth which means, the Coronal Mass Ejection is on its way to the planet earth. It's expected arrival is Aug. 3. This is known as a geomagnetic storm, and they have been known to cause electrical power outages and damage communications satellites. They drive shock waves which produce energetic particles that can be damaging to both electronic equipment and astronauts that venture outside the protection of the Earth's magnetic field.
The broader implications of a US-NATO Israel attack on Iran are far-reaching. The war and the economic crisis are intimately related. The war economy is financed by Wall Street, which stands as the creditor of the US administration. The US weapons producers are the recipients of the US Department of Defense multibillion dollar procurement contracts for advanced weapons systems. In turn, "the battle for oil" in the Middle East and Central Asia directly serves the interests of the Anglo-American oil giants.
Most Americans still appear to be operating under the delusion that the "recession" will soon pass and that things will get back to "normal" very soon. Unfortunately, that is not anywhere close to the truth. What we are now witnessing are the early stages of the complete and total breakdown of the U.S. economic system. The U.S. government, state governments, local governments, businesses and American consumers have collectively piled up debt that is equivalent to approximately 360 percent of GDP. At no point during the Great Depression (or at any other time during our history) did we ever come close to such a figure. We have piled up the biggest mountain of debt that the world has ever seen, and now that gigantic debt bubble is beginning to pop. As this house of cards comes crashing down, the economic pain is going to become almost unimaginable.
By the end of the recession, there will be approximately 1,000 bank failures. Does this sound extreme? It should but the numbers don’t cover the entire story. Since 2008 the number of bank failures has reached 269 and this doesn’t includeconsolidations done through the FDICwhere bigger banks ate up smaller banks before they officially failed. Last week, 7 banks failed. At that pace, we are looking at 364 bank failures per year and the actual number of closings per week has consistently gone up. The FDIC is in a precarious situation. The Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) is technically speaking, broke.
In continuing with the trivial approach of actually caring bout fundamentals instead of merely generous (and endless) Fed liquidity, we peruse the most recent RealPoint June 2010 CMBS Delinquency report. The result: total delinquent unpaid balance for CMBS increased by $3.1 billion to $60.5 billion, 111% higher than the $28.6 billion from a year ago, after deteriorations in 30, 90+ Day, Foreclosure and REO inventory. This represents a record 7.7% of total outstanding CMBS exposure. Even worse, total Special Servicing exposure by unpaid balance has taken another major leg for the worse, jumping to $88.6 billion, or 11.3%, up 0.7% from the month before. And even as cumulative losses show no sign of abating, average loss severity on CMBS continues being sky high:
No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.
After several failure-heavy weeks (13 in the past two weeks combined), this Friday proved no exception as five more institutions closed their doors. That brought the nation’s yearly total to 108, just 32 short of last year’s total with approximately four months left in the year.
Considering that evidence of inflation abounds, the Federal Reserve has pulled off a good trick by convincing Americans that we are about to "suffer" through a protracted period of deflation. Why have we been so easily duped? In the past ten years, the monetary base has grown from $600 billion to $2 trillion. This expansion has accompanied a rise in the price of gold from below $300/oz at the beginning of the decade to around $1,200/oz today. The price of gold is the best arbiter for a currency's purchasing power. Therefore, gold is still telling us that inflation is eroding the value of our dollar. Other commodities, like crude oil, are telling the same story. Ten years ago, a barrel of oil was trading for $25. Today, it is $78.
The big picture: With a weakening labor market, softer consumer confidence, softening housing activity and retail sales, and an intensifying trade deficit, the early stages of a renewed economic decline — what likely will be popularized as a "double-dip" recession — have begun to unfold. Accordingly, most business reporting in the months ahead will tend to show patterns of accelerating contraction.
“It’s flown under the radar,” professor Stempel says. “Regulators have not done their job.” Until public officials wake up, the bereaved will remain a secret profit center for the life insurance industry.
This appears to be the first time, however, that the intelligence community and Google have funded the same startup, at the same time. No one is accusing Google of directly collaborating with the CIA. But the investments are bound to be fodder for critics of Google, who already see the search giant as overly cozy with the U.S. government, and worry that the company is starting to forget its “don’t be evil” mantra.
Almost 5 million California adults say they could use help with a mental or emotional problem, according to a survey released Wednesday by researchers at UCLA. About 1 million of them meet the criteria for "serious psychological distress."
China may have no intentions of using its growing military might, but that is of little comfort for Western countries. From the World Trade Organization to the United Nations, Beijing is happy to use its soft power to get what it wants -- and it is wrong-footing the West at every turn.
The law, signed last week by President Obama, exempts the SEC from disclosing records or information derived from "surveillance, risk assessments, or other regulatory and oversight activities." Given that the SEC is a regulatory body, the provision covers almost every action by the agency, lawyers say. Congress and federal agencies can request information, but the public cannot.
The dollar had collapsed as world reserve currency in 2012 when the worsening economic depression made it clear to Washington’s creditors that the federal budget deficit was too large to be financed except by the printing of money. America’s collapse occurred when government ceased to represent the people and became the instrument of a private oligarchy. Decisions were made in behalf of short-term profits for the few at the expense of unmanageable liabilities for the many. Overwhelmed by liabilities, the government collapsed.
July 29 (Reuters) - Uncertainty over tax policy and new regulations is hindering U.S. businesses, making any potential further monetary accommodation by the Federal Reserve likely ineffective, a top Federal Reserve official said on Thursday.
July 29 (Bloomberg) -- Foreclosure filings climbed in three-quarters of U.S. metropolitan areas in the first half as high unemployment left many homeowners unable to pay their mortgages, according to RealtyTrac Inc.
European banks have amassed €30 trillion in liabilities and face a serious funding threat over the next two years as authorities withdraw emergency support, according to a new report by Standard & Poor's.
And Here's that Rare Weimar Book That Bankers are Buying & Everybody is Talking About from $249-$749.00 on Amazon! BE SURE TO DOWNLOAD IT BEFORE IT DISAPPEARS!!!
"It's an investment in life," says Hodge, a Teamsters union representative. "I want to make sure I have a place I can take me and my family if that worst-case scenario were to happen."
"Without a budget in place that addresses our $19 billion budget deficit, every day of delay brings California closer to a fiscal meltdown," Schwarzenegger said in a statement.
However, most Districts that reported on auto sales noted declines in recent weeks. Activity in residential real estate markets was sluggish in most Districts after the expiration of the April 30 deadline for the homebuyer tax credit. Commercial real estate markets, especially construction, remained weak. Banking conditions varied across the Districts, with some Districts noting soft or decreased overall loan demand; credit standards remained tight in most reporting Districts.
That's right, apparently our central planners, in their infinite wisdom have decided that what the economy is really lacking right now is more cheap housing. Here's what Rosie Rios, the US Treasurer wrote:
Since the global financial crisis started in earnest in 2008, there has been a debate raging in economic circles. Is the economy experiencing inflation or deflation?
India has raised interest rates and issued a stark warning on inflation dangers, joining China, Brazil, and other tiger economies in concerted moves to tighten policy.
Despite gold's eight percent drop this past month, the commodity is still the world's "currency of first resort," Ben Davies, CEO of Hinde Capital, told CNBC.
In the second part of his most recent interview with Eric King of King World News, market analyst and trend spotter Jim Rickards of Omnis Inc. elaborates on the parallels between the United States and the decline of the Roman empire. Things are worse now, Rickards argues, because the United States, unlike the ancient empire, has a huge national debt.
On deflation: I'm a believer that the stock market lows of March 2009 will not be revisited. You have people like Robert Prechter who think the Dow will collapse to 700 because of debt deleveraging. Debt deleveraging could happen, but the Dow will not fall because of monetary policy. The Fed will keep everything inflated in nominal terms. And if the Dow does go to 700, you'll have more to worry about than your investments. All the banks will be bust. The government will be bust. You don't want cash if massive deflation happens. On the contrary: It will be worthless. You have to think very carefully about hardcore deflation.
If the United States encountered a fiscal crisis, the abrupt rise in interest rates would reflect investors’ fears that the government would renege on the terms of its existing debt or that it would increase the supply of money to finance its activities or pay creditors and thereby boost inflation. To restore investors’ confidence, policymakers would probably need to enact spending cuts or tax increases more drastic and painful than those that would have been necessary had the adjustments come sooner.
July 27 (Bloomberg) -- About 18.9 million homes in the U.S. stood empty during the second quarter as surging foreclosures helped push ownership to the lowest level in a decade.
Confidence by propaganda, election time coming, inflation by quantitative easing, major countries deep in debt, IMF could use interest rates to prick bubbles, massive injections of money must end and then return to the gold standard.
MineWeb's Dorothy Kosich reports on growing controversy over the U.S. Mint's claimed inability to get enough gold and silver coin blanks from its usual suppliers to meet the public's demand for U.S. gold and silver eagle coins. Kosich's report is headlined "Bullion, Coin Dealers Call for Investigation of U.S. Coin Blanks Supply" and you can find it here: http://www.mineweb.co.za/mineweb/view/mineweb/en/page72068?oid=108615&sn...
But newsletter writer Bix Weir argues that the Mint's explanation is ridiculous, that the Mint could manufacture all the necessary blanks itself and fulfill public demand for gold and silver coins instead of rationing those coins if it was willing to pay for the necessary gold and silver. Weir's commentary is headlined "The U.S. Mint Fraud" and you can find it at his Internet site here: http://www.roadtoroota.com/public/330.cfm
More Tax info, than the previous post. In just six months, the largest tax hikes in the history of America will take effect. They will hit families and small businesses in three great waves on January 1, 2011:
July 27 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. local governments may cut almost 500,000 jobs through next year to cope with sliding property taxes, a decline in state and federal aid and added need for social services, according to a report released today.
July 27 (Bloomberg) -- Confidence among U.S. consumers declined in July to a five-month low, a sign the lack of jobs will limit the economy’s recovery.
The Defense Department is unable to account for $8.7 billion of the $9.1 billion in Development Fund for Iraq monies in received for reconstruction in Iraq. This according to a study published today by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction.
TEHRAN (Reuters) – Iran expects the United States to launch a military strike on "at least two countries" in the Middle East in the next three months, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told state-run Press TV.
What we've created, instead, is a group of institutions that between them comprise nothing less than a financial oligarchy. These guys have Western taxpayers over a barrel. And what's alarming is that there is almost nothing in this bill that will stop yet more too-big-to-fail calamities. Mr President, you have missed a historic opportunity and, for that, history's judgment will be severe.
The fiscal costs of the depression continue to mount, with the White House on Friday raising its deficit projection for 2011 to $1.4 trillion from $1.267 trillion. That gap in the forecast – $133 billion – was close to the size of the entire budget deficit back in 2002. Amazing. You also know it is a depression when you find out on the weekend that the FDIC seized and shuttered another seven banks, making it 103 closures for the year. What a recovery!
The winds are showing strong signals of another powerful round of Quantitative Easing, the so-called QE2. When announced formally, or incontrovertibly detected, the potential for a $5000 gold price will be provided. The USEconomy is moribund, and the EU Economy is moribund. Economic stimulus and monetary accommodations have ended in the United States. The deceptive cry of a second half recovery is met by the arrival of a second half deep swoon. November elections are coming in the United States, when liberal policy, free spending, and reckless decisions are normally made. Numerous smart analysts like Eric Sprott, Jim Grant, Jim Rickards, and Porter Stansberry expect the QE2.0 to set sail soon, maybe announced this calendar year
He is an advisor to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States and Support Group of the Director of National Intelligence and recently testified before Congress on the causes of the financial crisis.
Welcome to the world of bullion coin investing, a business that has soared alongside the popularity of gold despite its disadvantages. The world's thirst for gold coins has risen more than sovereign government mints can quench it, with demand on track this year to outpace 2009, itself a record.
"We believe that ongoing pressure on sovereign debt markets, combined with persistent concerns over private sector credit contraction will raise the spectre of debt monetization repeatedly over the next few years," the analysts advised. "We expect that this background will remain very supportive for gold prices over the period, and that informs our above consensus gold price outlook and our inclusion of two gold stocks in our top ten picks..."
As they prepare for holiday reading in Tuscany, City bankers are buying up rare copies of an obscure book on the mechanics of Weimar inflation published in 1974.
The seven bank seizures announced Friday bring to 103 the failures so far in 2010. The pace of bank closures this year is well ahead of that of 2009, which saw a total 140 banks shuttered amid the recession and mounting loan defaults.
Goldman Sachs sent $4.3 billion in federal tax money to 32 entities, including many overseas banks, hedge funds and pensions, according to information made public Friday night. Goldman Sachs disclosed the list of companies to the Senate Finance Committee after a threat of subpoena from Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Ia. Asked the significance of the list, Grassley said, "I hope it's as simple as taxpayers deserve to know what happened to their money."
We are not living under true free market capitalism right now. Free markets require free market money. Fifty percent of every transaction involves currency. You have to allow the market to pick what money is and what interest rates are (the price of money itself). You cannot have a group of arrogant men trying to set interest rates and manipulate the economy. You cannot have governments giving special favors to their richest friends, the corporations and special interests that can afford to do all the lobbying. This is what tilts capitalism to the point where it really isn't capitalism. This is no longer a free market. We haven't lived under free markets in the United States since 1913, when the Federal Reserve was introduced.
Hu Xiaolian, deputy governor at the Chinese central bank, has released a paper which suggests it's soon time for China to peg the yuan to a basket of foreign currencies, rather than the U.S. dollar alone
Do you remember Bernanke's words, "You cannot have deflation in a fiat currency system." Why not? Because the Fed can create so much money that inflation will dominate deflation.
In terms of US dollar circulation and US gold holdings, to make the dollar convertible into gold would mean a gold price in excess of $50,000 an ounce.
China is not the only country that resents the devastating frauds that the US has perpetrated on not only its own people but the rest of the world through its Wall Street banks and ratings agencies.
The unfunded entitlements on the U.S. are simply staggering, over $60 trillion according to Cembalest's report. It makes Europe look positively austere (though the size of their economies are smaller, they still appear to be in better shape).
When Louisiana residents ask marine toxicologist and community activist Riki Ott what she would do if she lived in the Gulf with children, she tells them she would leave immediately. "It's that bad. We need to start talking about who's going to pay for evacuations."
The lowest bracket for the personal income tax, for instance, moves up 50% — to 15% from 10%. The next lowest bracket — 25% — will rise to 28%, and the old 28% bracket will be 31%. At the higher end, the 33% bracket is pushed to 36% and the 35% bracket becomes 39.6%. But the damage doesn't stop there.
July 21 (Bloomberg) --Matthew Simmons has been saying the spill is worse than anyone admits for weeks, and he hasn't been wrong yet! Simmons says the leak is much bigger than the cameras show thanks to a big gushing hole around ten miles from the sunken rig:
A momentous event just occurred this afternoon: For the first time in many years, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve went before Congress, set aside his rose-colored glasses, dispensed with most of his sugar-coated platitudes and made some hard-hitting statements about the U.S. economy. Bernanke on jobs: “This is the worst labor market since the Great Depression.”
Economists have raised the prospect that the Bank of England could restart quantitative easing after minutes from this month’s rate-setting meeting showed that “money printing” was discussed for the first time since February.
However, the Fed chairman says that unemployment will drop more slowly than was predicted earlier this year. And while not mentioning the possibility of a double dip recession in his remarks, he said the Fed also sees the risks for growth as "weighted to the downside."
July 21 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama signed the most sweeping set of financial rules since the Great Depression today, kicking off an election-year fight to define how the law will be put into effect.
Over 100 scientists and academic institution, research laboratory, conservation organizationleaders plushuman rights defenders from as far away as Norway and Greece signed the Scientists Consensus Statement on the Use of Chemical Dispersants in the Gulf of Mexicocalling for the Obama Administration toimmediately halt chemical aerial spraying in the Gulf region. A public petition to end dispersant use is also gaining momentum.
BEIJING – China's largest reported oil spill had more than doubled by Wednesday, closing beaches on the Yellow Sea and prompting an environmental official to warn the sticky black crude posed a "severe threat" to sea life and water quality.
WASHINGTON, July 21 (Reuters) - Increased housing commitments swelled U.S. taxpayers' total support for the financial system by $700 billion in the past year to around $3.7 trillion, a government watchdog said on Wednesday.
He chronicled the dangers of excessive leverage as well as the bubbles the Fed was creating, while correctly forecasting the tragic collapse we are all enduring. Sprott Asset Management is one of the top firms in the world. The firm has become well known not only for its performance, but also for creating a gold and now silver trust.
FRONTLINE goes inside The Washington Post's major two-year examination into the massive, unwieldy, top secret world the U.S. government has created in response to 9/11. Coming fall 2010 to PBS.
The facts are that the BDI index of freight rates for bulk goods such as iron ore, coal, and soybeans, has fallen from 4,200 to 1,720 since the end of May. The Capesize index (ships too big for the Suez Canal, and essentially a proxy for iron ore) has dropped even more sharply from 5,520 to 1,676.
The Times reported that the BP Chief Executive could step down within the next 10 weeks. However, a BP spokesman said: "He has full support from the board and will remain in place."
WASHINGTON — Acknowledging that the recovery has slowed, the 
NEW YORK -- The Senate overcame a key procedural hurdle Wednesday to send $26 billion more in federal aid to cash-strapped states. The measure, which passed by a 61-38 vote, contains $16.1 billion in additional 
Almost 5 million California adults say they could use help with a mental or emotional problem, according to a survey released Wednesday by researchers at UCLA. About 1 million of them meet the criteria for "serious psychological distress."
WASHINGTON, July 21 (Reuters) - Increased housing commitments swelled U.S. taxpayers' total support for the financial system by $700 billion in the past year to around $3.7 trillion, a government watchdog said on Wednesday.