Volcanic Ash Cloud – North America Cut Off.

Baltic Dry Index. 2966 +38

LIR Gold Target by 2019: $3,000.

http://www.londonirvinereport.blogspot.com/

“The repercussions of the Laki Volcano eruption in Iceland resonated throughout Europe for the next few years. The summer of 1783, having been turned to winter was followed by an extreme, harsh winter in 1784, even in North America where it was reported as one of the coldest on record.

The Laki Volcano eruption in Iceland can also be said to have contributed significantly to the French Revolution. After several years of extreme weather in Europe caused by the Laki eruption, the ensuing destruction of crops and livestock brought famine and poverty that built up in France, triggering the Revolution which began in 1789.”

We open today with the news that the North American continent has been cut off from air travel with Great Britain and civilization, by a 7 mile high volcanic ash cloud from Iceland. Probably with Europe too, which is scary given continental Europe’s inclination to rush off into inexplicable wars in the absence of US troops to end them. Don’t you just love Iceland, they can’t or won’t pay off their banksters debts yet send free useless ash to everyone in Britain instead. Supposedly, the cut off is to end a 1 pm BST later today, which should be enough to prevent total panic descending on North America, once the realization of their eastern isolation sinks in. Hapless Americans headed for the watering holes of Great Britain and Europe are advised instead to head off to Las Vegas, where many fine scaled down replicas of some of Europe’s finest buildings and drinks have been replicated. Distressed Brits unable to withstand the wait to reach North America are advised to check in at the Heathrow Dude Ranch and retirement home for seaside donkeys, nestled in the picturesque bucolic rolling fields between the M4/M25 interchange and Heathrow Airport’s Perimeter Road.

Below, the Journal covers the growing catastrophe for North America. I suspect, given the Icelandic track record above, returning to normality by 1 pm BST might prove to be slightly optimistic.

APRIL 14, 2010
FAA Says Most North Transatlantic Flights Hit by Volcano Danger

U.S. authorities said Wednesday that they had frozen most transatlantic flights because of the danger posed by a volcanic ash cloud drifting south from Iceland.

The Federal Aviation Administration said it was keeping some Europe-bound aircraft on the ground at U.S. airports, while carriers such as Continental Airlines Inc. opted to cancel services until the situation was resolved.

The volcanic eruption in Iceland sent an ash cloud drifting south across the main airline corridor for transatlantic services. The particles reduce visibility and can even cause aircraft engines to shut down.

FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said "essentially all traffic" had been halted on the affected routes, with authorities expecting the disruption to run through between 0700 and 1200 GMT, the peak-time for arrivals to the U.K. from North America.

A Continental spokeswoman said it had cancelled eastbound flights from Newark to Glasgow, Edinburgh and Manchester, though anticipated normal operations on other services, albeit with potential air traffic control delays.

The Houston-based carrier operates one of the largest transatlantic networks, and said on its website that westbound flights "will most likely be rerouted around the ash cloud", with the move causing delays because of fuel stops.

U.K. airlines including Easyjet PLC adearlier warned travelers of potential disruption.

"Following the eruption of a volcano in Iceland earlier today, the Met Office have advised airlines that the ash plume may reach U.K. air space overnight. As a result this may cause significant disruption to flights departing the U.K. [Thursday]," the airline said in a statement.

The U.K air traffic control authority, NATS, earlier Wednesday said it was "restricting flights within the area affected by the ash cloud generated by the Icelandic volcanic eruption -- at present, this is the northern region of Scotland but is expected to move south."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303348504575184930036984968.html

In other news yesterday, the Fed’s big man of Dallas Texas, spoke out yesterday against the semi official central banks actual owners. Mr Fisher thinks that banks that are too big to fail, are banks that are too big to run or supervise. I suspect that Mr. Fisher is probably looking for a career change. My money is on Mr. Blankfein and his chilling threat below.

"If the financial system goes down, our business is going down and, trust me, yours and everyone else's is going down, too."

Lloyd Blankfein. CEO Goldman Sachs. November 8, 2009

Big banks should be broken up, Fed's Fisher says
Too-big-to-fail is too-big-to-manage or supervise
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Large financial institutions should be dismantled before their risky behavior creates another financial and economic crisis, a top Federal Reserve official said Wednesday.

The largest banks and pseudo-banks are too big to supervise and they are too big to manage, said Richard Fisher, president of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank. The costs imposed by these banks are greater than the benefits society gets from having them.

"The risk posed by coddling TBTF [too-big-to-fail] banks is simply too great," Fisher said at a conference about creating a new financial structure. "A truly effective restructuring of our regulatory system will have to neutralize what I consider to be the greatest threat to our financial system's stability" -- large financial institutions.

At some point, large banks don't have efficiencies of scale, Fisher said, but "disefficiencies of dysfunctionality."

"There are limits to size and to scope beyond which global authorities should muster the courage to draw a very bright, red line," Fisher said. "I think the disagreeable but sound thing to do regarding institutions that are TBTF is to dismantle them over time into institutions that can be prudently managed and regulated across borders."

"The existence of institutions considered TBTF exacerbated a crisis that has cost the world a substantial amount of potential output and a whole lot of employment," Fisher said. The world has lost more than $60 trillion in output because of the 2008 crisis, he said.

It would be better to have "an international accord to break up these institutions into ones of more manageable size," Fisher said, but "if we have to do this unilaterally, we should."
Fisher spoke at a conference sponsored by the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College in honor of economist Hyman Minsky, who taught that an unfettered financial system would inevitably create asset bubbles and subsequent financial crises. Markets are efficient only at creating crises, he said.

Minsky's ideas have gained new respect after the collapse of the dot-com bubble and the housing bubble proved how prescient he was. Four other top Fed officials are scheduled to speak at the conference, as well as former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/big-banks-should-be-broken-up-feds-fisher-says-2010-04-14

Below, another US great vampire squid makes its living by massive prop trading. In JP Morgan’s case it’s all down to “record fixed-income trading,” for the house account. What could possibly go wrong, that yet another taxpayer bailout couldn’t put right? Banksterism, not capitalism still rules.

“Fraud and falsehood only dread examination. Truth invites it.”

Samuel Johnson.

JPMorgan Earnings Increase 55% on Outlook for Economy
April 14 (Bloomberg) -- JPMorgan Chase & Co. said a “broad-based” economic recovery boosted first-quarter earnings 55 percent, surprising analysts with record fixed-income trading revenue and a better-than-expected outlook for consumer credit.

Net income at the second-biggest U.S. bank by assets climbed to $3.33 billion, or 74 cents a share, from $2.14 billion, or 40 cents, in the same period a year earlier and from $3.28 billion in the fourth quarter, the New York-based company said today in a statement. Record fixed-income trading revenue and a reduction in provisions for credit losses helped the bank beat the average estimate of 64 cents per share projected by 21 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

“There is clear and broad-based improvement in the economic factors in the United States and around the world,” Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon, 54, told reporters on a conference call.
Dimon cited signs including stabilizing U.S. home prices that signal the economy may be poised for a “strong recovery.” Chief Financial Officer Mike Cavanagh said delinquencies for credit cards and mortgages in which the borrower is behind by just one payment also improved in the first quarter, indicating that consumers’ finances are gaining strength after the worst recession in more than 70 years.

“Nobody saw those types of numbers coming,” said Paul Miller, a former examiner for the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and analyst at FBR Capital Markets in Arlington, Virginia.
JPMorgan’s earnings bode well for Bank of America Corp. and other banks, which report earnings later this month, Miller said. “Credit remains a wild card here, but Jamie talked very, very positive about credit and the consumer,” he said.

----- “China’s growing, India’s growing, Japan is growing, home prices have stopped going down, consumer income is up, consumers are spending, service and manufacturing indexes are up, inventories are still low, I could go on and on,” Dimon said. “This could be the makings of a good recovery. We don’t know for sure, but if you look at those factors, it’s pretty good.”

-----Dimon and Cavanagh didn’t give shareholders immediate hope of restoring the quarterly dividend, which was cut to 5 cents from 38 cents in February 2009.

“We want to see continued sustained improvement in employment, continued sustained improvement in delinquencies” and a better understanding of new bank capital rules before the dividend will increase, Dimon said, reiterating what he told shareholders in his annual letter last month.

Cavanagh said that increasing the payout to shareholders is “going to be down the road a little more.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a.Zv027iZigM

Below, George Soros is on something of a public campaign against another bankster generated bust. My guess is that it is already too late, with the banksters all trading up a storm of renewed derivatives gambling.

Markets could be derailed again, warns Soros
Apr 14, 2010 07:11 EDT
Railway porter-turned-billionaire financier George Soros delivered a stark warning last night that the financial world is on the wrong track and that we may be hurtling towards an even bigger boom and bust than in the credit crisis.

The man who ‘broke’ the Bank of England (and who is still able to earn a cool $3.3 bln in a year) said the same strategy of borrowing and spending that had got us out of the Asian crisis could shunt us towards another crisis unless tough lessons are learned.

Soros, who worked as a porter to pay for his studies at the London School of Economics after emigrating from Hungary, warned us to heed the lesson that modern economics had got it wrong and that markets are not inherently stable.

“The success in bailing out the system on the previous occasion led to a superbubble, except that in 2008 we used the same methods,” he told a meeting hosted by The Economist at the City of London’s modern and impressive Haberdashers’ Hall.

“Unless we learn the lessons, that markets are inherently unstable and that stability needs to the objective of public policy, we are facing a yet larger bubble.

“We have added to the leverage by replacing private credit with sovereign credit and increasing national debt by a significant amount.”

http://blogs.reuters.com/fundshub/2010/04/14/markets-could-be-derailed-again-warns-soros/

We end for the day with Soc Gen’s Dylan Grice pointing out the troubling fact that Greece was only different in one respect, it’s debt problem was still small enough to be bailed out. The others, the US and UK included, aren’t too big to fail, merely too big to bailout in any meaningful sense of the pre-bailout financial system. Another way of saying Von Mises is all too likely to be right. Stay long precious metals.

Greece – ‘It’s not that different’
SocGen’s Dylan Grice is one person not bored with Greece. In fact, he believes it is the beginning of a wave of government funding crises, not the end.

The reason? The colossal amount of government debt that needs to be issued.

I’m not a bond strategist and I’ve not done anything sophisticated or clever, but by taking Bloomberg’s data for existing debt maturity for each government (red) and using the OECD’s projected 2010 deficits as a proxy for net new issuance (grey) my numbers shouldn’t be too far out. But if my numbers are even roughly right and issuance is the problem, Greece should have had almost the least to worry about!

This concerns Grice because of the unavoidable arithmetic behind debt sustainability, namely; the interest a country pays on its debt must equal the nominal growth rate of that country.
If it does, the incremental government revenue generated by the economic growth will pay for the coupons on the debt. If it doesn’t, a shortfall develops between incremental revenues and incremental coupon payments and in the absence of further austerity, more debt is required to finance the deficit.

This might sound abstract, but it’s exactly what happened in Greece. When the first austerity plan was presented, Greece cut public sector wages by a painful 10% causing angry protest and social unrest, although it saved the government EUR650m. But the same austerity plan assumed Greece’s interest cost would be 4.7% and by late February it was paying 6.25%. According to the WSJ, this has blown a EUR700m hole in its budget, more than offsetting the savage public sector wage cuts already enacted.

Given that everyone is subject to these iron-clad laws of budget sustainability then everyone is vulnerable to a reassessment of sovereign risk by the market, says Grice.

And if you thought Greece was somehow different from the UK, US et al think again, says Grice.
But it’s not just about getting this year out of the way. If it can happen in Greece, it can happen everywhere else too, because Greece just isn’t that different.OK, so it misrepresented the size of its liabilities … but so too do most other governments; its real fiscal problems are hidden off-balance sheet in the enormous welfare obligations it can’t afford to pay and so are most other governments; its debt maturity isn’t notably different from the rest of the OECD’s (at about eight years it’s actually longer than those of the US and of Japan); and its projected budget deficit is lower than those projected in the UK and the US (third chart inside).

So there you have it – if can happen in Athens if can happen anywhere.
http://ftalphaville.ft.com/

Email me for a copy of Mr Grice’s excellent scary report.



“Overheard at Goldman Sachs”:
“We assume that you know what you’re doing,
In this ill-advised trade you’re pursuing,
But the opposite bet
That we place on your debt
May eventually hasten your ruin.”

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2010/03/17/celebrate-st-patricks-day-with-some-economic-limericks/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wsj%2Feconomics%2Ffeed+%28WSJ.com%3A+Real+Time+Economics+Blog%29

At the Comex silver depositories Wednesday, final figures were: Registered 48.89 Moz, Eligible 66.55 Moz, Total 115.44 Moz.


+++++

Crooks & Scoundrels Corner.

The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.

Today, more on the race to get into the UK’s House of Crooks. The Tory leaning Telegraph thinks the Conservative Party has a shot at beating a hung Parliament.

"A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls."

George W Bush

General Election 2010: Conservatives lead in 100 key seats, Telegraph poll shows
The Conservatives are on course for a convincing election victory after a new poll for The Daily Telegraph showed the party is leading Labour by 12 points in crucial marginal constituencies.
By Andrew Porter, Political Editor Published: 10:30PM BST 14 Apr 2010

On the eve of tonight’s first ever leaders’ television debate, the most comprehensive survey of swing seats since the campaign began showed David Cameron comfortably ahead.
The poll by Crosby/Textor was carried out in 100 marginal seats; 80 held by Labour and 20 by the Liberal Democrats.

43 per cent of voters questioned said they would vote Conservative, 31 per cent Labour and 20 Lib Dem.

Labour have dropped five points since the 2005 election in these seats, while the Tories have gained seven points, the poll showed.

The results suggest the Conservatives are much more likely to achieve an outright majority at the election than previously thought.

One recent poll indicated that the Tory lead had narrowed to just three points, making a hung parliament the most likely result.

However, it is in the marginal constituencies - where pollsters believe the election will be won or lost - that the Conservatives have concentrated most of their efforts.

This latest poll appears to suggest that the strategy - masterminded by Lord Ashcroft - is paying off.

The new poll also predicts that turnout in the marginals is likely to be better than many have predicted with 65 per cent of those questioned saying they would definitely vote.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/election-2010/7591249/General-Election-2010-Conservatives-lead-in-100-key-seats-Telegraph-poll-shows.html

"Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the National Debt."

Herbert Hoover


UK General Election polls. – Why a hung Parliament looks increasingly likely.
http://www.ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/

Below, what a surprise, a UK enquiry into the UK’s University of East Anglia’s dodgy Climate Research Unit’s “climategate” scandal, found nothing of any concern to worry about. Though the US Professor who came up with the infamous “hockey stick” global warming chart, ought to have been more careful in picking his methods. Phew, what a relief, for a moment there we almost thought that a Brit was going to pick on a British institution. With more and more sign of global cooling arriving, the lunatic left are going to carry on with their socialist agenda, promoting man made global warming from CO2. If it wasn’t so serious it would be funny.

“Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.”

Samuel Johnson.

'Hockey stick' graph was exaggerated
The 'hockey stick' that became emblematic of the threat posed by climate change exaggerated the rise in temperature because it was created using 'inappropriate' methods, according to the head of the Royal Statistical Society.
By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent Published: 2:52PM BST 14 Apr 2010

Professor David Hand said that the research – led by US scientist Michael Mann – would have shown less dramatic results if more reliable techniques had been used to analyse the data.
Prof Hand was among a group of experts charged with investigating the "climategate" email scandal that engulfed the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) last year.

Sceptics claimed that the hacked messages showed scientists were manipulating data to support a theory of man-made global warming.

However the review, led by Lord Oxburgh into the research carried out by the centre, found no evidence of ''deliberate scientific malpractice".

Lord Oxburgh said the scientists at the research unit arrived at their conclusions ''honestly and sensibly''.

But the reviewers found that the scientists could have used better statistical methods in analysing some of their data, although it was unlikely to have made much difference to their results.

That was not the case with some previous climate change reports, where "inappropriate methods" had exaggerated the global warming phenomenon.

Prof Hand singled out a 1998 paper by Prof Mann of Pennsylvania State University, a constant target for climate change sceptics, as an example of this.

He said the graph, that showed global temperature records going back 1,000 years, was exaggerated - although any reproduction using improved techniques is likely to also show a sharp rise in global warming. He agreed the graph would be more like a field hockey stick than the ice hockey blade it was originally compared to.

"The particular technique they used exaggerated the size of the blade at the end of the hockey stick. Had they used an appropriate technique the size of the blade of the hockey stick would have been smaller," he said. "The change in temperature is not as great over the 20th century compared to the past as suggested by the Mann paper."

----The graph used data from hundreds of studies of past temperatures using tree rings, lake sediment, and glacier ice cores and then merged these with more reliable recent temperature records.

Prof Hand said many of the reproductions of the graph do not make clear when these different sets of data are used.

"It is only misleading in the sense they merged two different things," he said.

Prof Hand praised the blogger Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit for uncovering the fact that inappropriate methods were used which could produce misleading results.

"The Mann 1998 hockey stick paper used a particular technique that exaggerated the hockey stick effect," he said.

Prof Mann, who is Professor of Earth System Science at the Pennsylvania State University, said the statistics used in his graph were correct.

"I would note that our '98 article was reviewed by the US National Academy of Sciences, the highest scientific authority in the United States, and given a clean bill of health," he said. "In fact, the statistician on the panel, Peter Bloomfield, a member of the Royal Statistical Society, came to the opposite conclusion of Prof Hand."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7589897/Hockey-stick-graph-was-exaggerated.html


The monthly Coppock Indicators finished March:

DJIA: +168 UP. NASDAQ: +370 UP. SP500: +196 UP. The great Bull market goes on with the all three continuing higher in positive numbers.

+++++

Help the LIR fight Banksterism, the EU, and for sound money.
If you can, help the LIR stay around and make a difference. Please make a donation at the PayPal link on the website or better still become a sponsor for what looks like an exciting 2010. Capitalism not banksterism. Many thanks to all who have helped.
+++++

Sunspots – A 22 year colder world? (From 2004?)

Spotless Days April 14
Current Stretch: 0 days
2010 total: 7 days (7%)
2009 total: 260 days (71%)
Since 2004: 777 days
Typical Solar Min: 485 days
http://www.spaceweather.com/
The long minimum seems to have ended.

New Solar Cycle Prediction
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/29may_noaaprediction.htm

Is the Sun Missing Its Spots?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/21/science/space/21sunspot.html?8dpc

Are Sunspots Different During This Solar Minimum?
-----But something is unusual about the current sunspot cycle. The current solar minimum has been unusually long, and with more than 670 days without sunspots through June 2009, the number of spotless days has not been equaled since 1933.

----During the period from 1645 to 1715, the Sun entered a period of low activity now known as the Maunder Minimum, when through several 11- year periods the Sun displayed few if any sunspots. Models of the Sun's irradiance suggest that the solar energy input to the Earth decreased during that time and that this change in solar activity could explain the low temperatures recorded in Europe during the Little Ice Age.

----The same data were later published [Penn and Livingston, 2006], and the observations showed that the magnetic field strength in sunspots were decreasing with time, independent of the sunspot cycle. A simple linear extrapolation of those data suggested that sunspots might completely vanish by 2015.These observations caused researchers to wonder whether the characteristics of sunspots are different now than in other solar cycles.http://www.leif.org/EOS/2009EO300001.pdf

Big freeze could signal global warming 'pause'
The Arctic conditions which have brought Britain to a standstill over the past week could be the start of a "pause" in global warming, some scientists believe.
Published: 9:20AM GMT 11 Jan 2010
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/6965342/Big-freeze-could-signal-global-warming-pause.html

Sunspot cycle 24: Together with sunspot cycle 25, the next two global cooling cycles. The new “Dalton Minimum?” Twenty Nine months now with low sunspots numbers, and counting. March was the 29th month of yet another low number of 15.4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalton_Minimum

Smoothed sunspot numbers (SSN). 2007, Oct. 0.9. The end of cycle 23.

Sunspot cycle 24: Nov 1.7. Dec 10.1. Jan 3.4. Feb 2.2. Mar 9.3 April 2.9. May: 2.9. June 3.1. July 0.5. August 0.5. Sep 1.1 Oct. 2.9. Nov. 4.1 Dec 0.8. Jan 1.5. Feb 1.4. Mar 0.7. Apr 1.2. May 2.9. June 2.6. July 3.5. Aug. 0.0. Sep 4.2. Oct 4.6. Nov 4.2. Dec 10.6 Jan 13.1 Feb 18.6 Mar 15.4.

Sunspots. http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/SunspotCycle.shtml

The count. http://sidc.oma.be/products/ri_hemispheric/

Why a New Minimum. http://sesfoundation.org/dalton_minimum.pdf

The “Carrington Event,” September 1, 1859.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/06may_carringtonflare.htm

Current Space Weather.
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/

What happened to global warming?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8299079.st

++++

This week’s featured links: Silver & Gold Miners + Rare Metals.

With US trillion dollar deficits stretching as far as the eye can see, and voodoo economics the order of the day at the central banks, I think it is now time to begin selectively scaling into precious metals companies that mostly meet the following criteria:

Adequate cash reserves. Good management. Strong in-ground reserves or prospects. NAFTA based, or else located in countries with strong rule of law.

Endeavour Silver Corp. TSX: EDR. http://www.edrsilver.com/s/Home.asp

Semafo TSX: SMF http://www.semafo.com/home_company_intro.php

ATW Gold Corp. TSX.V: ATW. http://www.atwgold.com/

US Silver Corp. TSX.V: USA. http://www.us-silver.com/s/Home.asp

Excellon Resources Inc. TSX: EXN. http://www.excellonresources.com/

First Majestic Silver Corp. TSX: FR http://www.firstmajestic.com/s/Home.asp

New Jersey Mining Company. OTCBB: NJMC
http://www.newjerseymining.com/index.html

Atna Resources Ltd. TSX: ATN. http://www.atna.com/s/Home.asp

Barkerville Gold Mines TSX.V: BGM. Formerly International Wayside Gold Mines Ltd.
http://www.barkervillegold.com/s/Home.asp

Shoreham Resources Ltd. TSX-V: SMH
http://www.shoreham.ca/

ATAC Resources Ltd, TSX.V: ATC. http://www.atacresources.com/s/home.asp

Evolving Gold Corp. TSX.V: EVG http://www.evolvinggold.com/

Lydian International Ltd. TSX: LYD. Note: LYD operates in Armenia, a region carrying higher risk than our usual safer picks in NAFTA lands. http://www.lydianinternational.co.uk/

The story of rare earths and metals is mostly one of China producing and exporting, Japan, America and everyone else importing. Vital to our new technologies, and lifestyle, and critical to hybrid and electric cars, Rare Earth Elements and Heavy Rare Earths, are a strategic choke point held in China’s hands. Lately China has been squeezing that choke point. I think that AVL at Thor Lake Canada, has a property of global importance. A property with the ability to offer NAFTA access to REEs and HREs for the decades ahead. As America and the west move to reduce over dependence on oil from unstable regions, we will see demand for rare metals take off.

Avalon Rare Metals Inc. TSX: AVL. http://www.avalonraremetals.com/

We will be adding more REEs as appropriate.

Warning.

Sadly we are all in unexplored territory. The world has never before suffered a severe recession/depression while operating on fiat currency. As is widely apparent, the central banks haven’t a clue and are making up the rules as the flounder along. They never saw it coming they claim, although it was obvious to many fine writers though not unfortunately in the mainstream media, that a giant financialised derivatives gambling economy would always end badly. There are no experts now, for the simple reason that we have never before faced such a sudden synchronised and deep collapse in the global economies.

The unfortunate fact that we are operating on fraudulent currencies is highly likely to mean it all ends many months from now, in a fiat currency revulsion, but only after the monetary authorities have first tried pouring in endless amounts of newly created money. A derivatives gambling world with an estimated quadrillion dollars of face value has to be unwound and the losses absorbed. In this sort of investing environment, cash, gold and silver and tangible assets are favoured over stocks and intangible assets.

As always if thinking about making an investment, it’s important to do one’s own due diligence. No one has more at risk in an investment than you do yourself. In these difficult economic times, there will likely be several false bottoms before the real one arrives and hindsight allows us to confirm that the bottom is in. Even then, a “V” shaped rebound is highly improbable. A double dip recession seems likely. Beware the false "statistical" government subsidised "recovery." It is a "recovery" bought from a future of fiat currency collapse.

Graeme Irvine

London Irvine Report: www.londonirvinereport.com/

Graeme@londonirvinereport.com