Tuesday 1 March 2011

Dollar Trouble?

Baltic Dry Index. 1251 +06

LIR Gold Target by 2019: $30,000. Revised due to QE.

Buy gold and sit on it. That is the key to success."

Dr. Franz Pick

With trillion dollar deficits stretching out to the future as far as the eye can see, and with China suddenly announcing that it holds 1.1 trillion of Uncle Sam’s bonds, the Jasmine revolution sweeping the Middle East surprisingly has investors seeking safety in other currencies than the dollar. What do the weathly’s advisors know about the dollar that we don’t know. Suddenly even the rickety, unstable, unloved euro is favoured over the Bernanke-Obama US dollar. Stay long precious metals. Something significant is happening in the world, when the great vampire squids are abandoning the dollar, and advising their clients to do the same. Is China’s enormous US bond holding about to get clipped?

"Gold is as steady as a rock, a standard bearer by which all currencies can be accurately measured."

Mark Skousen

MARCH 1, 2011

Investors Are Seeking Safety in New Harbors

Dollar, Once a Favored Refuge, Loses Ground to Yen, Franc

For years, whenever significant political or financial turmoil reared its head anywhere on the globe, investors would turn to the U.S. dollar as a safe haven.

Yet as the chaos in North Africa has grown over the past month, investors have largely shunned the dollar and sought shelter elsewhere. They have turned to other traditional islands of stability, buying Japanese yen and the Swiss franc.

What has especially raised eyebrows has been the move by investors to buy euros, a currency traditionally seen as a riskier prospect than the dollar, especially with the euro zone's debt problems still largely unresolved.

This has sparked a debate over whether the dollar has lost its safe-haven status.

More.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704615504576172700977248380.html?mod=WSJEUROPE_hpp_LEFTTopWhatNews#articleTabs%3Darticle

Plowing money into the Euro seems most unwise to me. Trouble lies ahead as Ireland tries to renegotiate a bailout and Portugal, Spain and Italy, stagger up to the EU’s bailout door.

MARCH 1, 2011

Ireland Needs Merkel to Get Its Message

A presence hung over the Irish elections. It wasn't the shade of a hero from Ireland's long history of failed rebellions, or the mewling of a banker looking for another handout. It was, instead, the awesome power of a 56-year-old German woman by the name of Angela Merkel.

Many extraordinary things happened during the election. For a start, one of the most successful vote-winning machines in Europe's recent history failed to win many votes. A group of elite families that had exercised a stranglehold over the high offices of state for many decades found themselves shoved aside in a manner that is becoming increasingly familiar to North Africa's aging tyrants. And nobody blamed Britain for anything.

But the oddest thing about the campaign and the days following the vote was how often Mrs. Merkel's name was mentioned, not just by politicians, but by ordinary voters. Rightly or wrongly, many Irish people believe the fate of their nation is in the hands of the pastor's daughter who grew up in a country that no longer exists.

---- There was much discussion about which of the candidates for leadership had the necessary qualities to negotiate with Ms. Merkel. And in the end, Irish voters chose as their prime minister a man who comes from the same Christian Democratic tradition, and who had secured the public-relations coup of a meeting with the putative maker and breaker of nations midway through the campaign.

Enda Kenny will meet Mrs. Merkel again on Friday. Their respective parties sit in the European Parliament as part of the European People's Party, and leaders from that grouping meet in Helsinki to plot a course through a crucial month of negotiations that will set Europe's economic course for many years to come.

What Mr. Kenny wants from Ms. Merkel and other European leaders is a reduction in the interest rate charged on the loans his government will receive from the European Financial Stability Facility. Right now, that rate is close to 6%, well above the cost at which the EFSF borrows in the international bond markets.

Mr. Kenny's Fine Gael and his likely coalition partner both campaigned to reduce the interest rate and believe they have a mandate to secure a concession on that issue.

A number of European officials over recent weeks have said the deal was struck by an elected government and can't be altered. They claim Europe doesn't revisit agreements to change their terms.

More

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704615504576172363074386134.html?mod=WSJEUROPE_hpp_MIDDLETopNews

In oil news, another oil producer comes under the spell of the Jasmine revolution.

Protests in Oman Spread From Port City to Capital

By NADA BAKRI Published: February 28, 2011

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Demonstrators blocked roads and held rallies on Monday in Oman, a normally quiet oil-rich country along the southeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula, as three-day protests calling for political reforms and better living conditions spread to Muscat, the capital.

The protests in Oman, the latest country to join the wave in the Arab world, highlight the depth of discontent against long-serving dictators and monarchs. It also suggests that demonstrations could spread to other Persian Gulf countries.

In the northeastern port city of Sohar, where the protests originated, demonstrators blocked roads to the port, Oman’s second biggest, and to an industrial area that includes a refinery and an aluminum factory, two witnesses in Sohar and news agencies said. They also set a supermarket on fire and clashed with the police.

Protesters have also been camped out for three days in the city’s main square, called Kurra Ardiyah Roundabout, despite efforts by the police and army to push them out, a resident in Sohar said by e-mail.

Television images showed a small number of protesters gathered in Muscat. The demonstrations there appeared peaceful.

In an attempt to ease tensions, Sultan Qaboos bin Said, who has ruled for four decades since seizing power from his father, sent delegates to Sohar on Monday to negotiate with the protesters, but the outcome of those meetings remained unclear. He also promised to give more powers to the legislative council, according to ONA, the state news agency.

More.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/world/middleeast/01oman.html?_r=1&hp

We end for the day awaiting news from Hanover, home of German King George the first and his court musician Handel, who both escaped from Hanover to make an upward career move in London. George was the last “English” who couldn’t speak English until Prince Charles becomes king. Today is the start of the CeBit trade fair, “the world's largest trade fair showcasing digital IT and telecommunications solutions for home and work environments”. A whole lot more innovation is about to get unveiled.

CeBIT Global Conferences

Motto 2011: The power of creativity and innovation!

In just five short days, the CeBIT provide a panoramic view of the digital world's mainstay markets: ICT and Telecommunications, Digital Media also Consumer Electronics.

Date & Time: 1 - 5 March 2011, daily from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. - Venue: Convention Center (CC), Room 2, Hannover Exhibition Grounds.

----- CeBIT is the world's largest trade fair showcasing digital IT and telecommunications solutions for home and work environments. The key target groups are users from industry, the wholesale/retail sector, skilled trades, banks, the services sector, government agencies, science and all users passionate about technology. CeBIT offers an international platform for comparing notes on current industry trends, networking, and product presentations. Throughout the past 20 years, thousands of suppliers and users from all over the world have come together every year in the early spring at CeBIT in Hannover, Germany. Looking back, the birth of CeBIT on 12 March 1986 was the outcome of a long and complicated decision-making process. The computer industry had become a key feature of HANNOVER MESSE and had contributed to its unique status as the world's biggest trade show for capital goods. However, the computer exhibitors were having to contend with an increasing number of non-specialists at their stands.

http://www.cebit.de/en/about-the-trade-show/facts-figures/profile/history-of-cebit

"Whenever an overall breakdown of a monetary or financial system occurs, return to gold always restores order, revives confidence and brings back prosperity."

Donald Hoppe

At the Comex silver depositories Monday, final figures were: Registered 43.16 Moz, Eligible 59.39 Moz, Total 102.55 Moz.

+++++

Crooks and Scoundrels Corner.

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

Everyone’s favourite villain, 65 billion Ponzi fraudster Madoff, gave a cream puff series of phone interviews to New York Magazine. Is an appeal against the length of sentence coming next. The whole original article is worth the read if only to demonstrate just how deprave the banksters and vampire squids have become. No one including, Madoff himself comes out with much standing, except for his son Mark who committed suicide and the tragic young family he left behind.

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

Mark 8:36. King James Version.

Bernard Madoff says running world's biggest ponzi scheme was a 'head trip'

Bernard Madoff has admitted that running the biggest financial fraud in history was a "head trip" as some of the world's biggest banks threw money at him to manage.

By Richard Blackden, US Business Editor 8:21PM GMT 28 Feb 2011

"The chairman of Banco Santander came to see me, the chairman of Credit Suisse came down, chairman of UBS came down," Mr Madoff told the New York Magazine in an interview. "It feeds your ego. All of a sudden, these banks which wouldn't give you the time of day, they're willing to give you a billion dollars."

In an in-depth interview conducted over 12 telephone calls from his prison in North Carolina, Madoff painted himself as someone who was constantly battling a feeling that he did not belong in the higher echelons on Wall Street. The 72-year old, who was given a 150-year prison sentence in 2009, also said that it should have been obvious to investors, regulators and banks as early as the mid-to-late Nineties that his business was a fraud.

While again shielding his family from any blame for the $65bn (£40bn) Ponzi scheme, Madoff offered little sympathy for some of those who invested with him.

More.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/bernard-madoff/8353431/Bernard-Madoff-says-running-worlds-biggest-ponzi-scheme-was-a-head-trip.html

The original article here.

The Madoff Tapes

One evening, my home phone rang. “You have a collect call from Bernard Madoff, an inmate at a federal prison,” a recording announced. And there he was

By Steve Fishman Published Feb 27, 2011

http://nymag.com/news/features/berniemadoff-2011-3/

"From a strictly economic point of view, buying gold in a major inflation and holding it probably presents the least risk of capital loss of any investment or speculation."

Henry Hazlitt

The monthly Coppock Indicators finished February:

DJIA: +156 Down 05. NASDAQ: +217 Down 11. SP500: +157 Down 4.

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