Monday 8 April 2013

Cracking at the Seams.



Baltic Dry Index. 861 -05

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

"When paper money systems begin to crack at the seams, the run to gold could be explosive."

Harry Browne

In the land of the free and the home of the brave, the not so brave and after King George Bush the Less, the not so free, are busy making preparations for what comes after the fall of the Bernocchio dollar. QE to infinity and beyond, is always going to have a bad ending, either if/when the Fed stops it and the new asset bubbles crash, or when continuing it requires ever larger amounts of QE forever, triggering dollar devaluation and the age of the Great Inflation. Despite what Washington’s charlatans say, there is no free lunch from quantitative easing. It merely buys time, postponing but not averting a very traumatic ending of the Great Nixonian Error of fiat money. Some in America have at long last wised up, and are belatedly making preparation for the aftermath.  We can only hope that they are not too late to be fully prepared for when the global central banksters fictional money game collapses.

"Were we to be directed from Washington when to sow and when to reap, we should soon want bread."

Thomas Jefferson

Trust in Gold Not Bernanke as U.S. States Promote Bullion

By Amanda J. Crawford - Apr 8, 2013 5:01 AM GMT
Distrust of the Federal Reserve and concern that U.S. dollars may become worthless are fueling a push in more than a dozen states to recognize gold and silver coins as legal tender.

Lawmakers in Arizona are poised to follow Utah, which authorized bullion for currency in 2011. Similar bills are advancing in Kansas, South Carolina and other states.

The Tea Party-backed measures are mostly symbolic -- you still can’t pay for groceries with gold in Utah. They reflect lingering dollar concerns, amplified by the Fed’s unconventional moves in recent years to stabilize the economy, said Loren Gatch, who teaches politics at the University of Central Oklahoma.

“The legislation is about signaling discontent with monetary policy and about what Ben Bernanke is doing,” said Gatch, who studies alternative currencies at the Edmond, Oklahoma-based school. “There is a fear that the government, or Bernanke in particular and the Federal Reserve, is pursuing a policy that will lead to the collapse of the dollar. That’s what is behind it.”

Bernanke has pushed interest rates to near zero since the 18-month recession that began in December 2007. The Fed said in March it would continue buying $85 billion in securities each month in a program known as quantitative easing that has ballooned its assets beyond $3 trillion and is aimed at keeping long-term borrowing costs low to support economic growth.

----In Texas, lawmakers are considering a measure supported by Republican Governor Rick Perry to establish the Texas Bullion Depository to store gold bars valued at about $1 billion and held in a New York bank warehouse. The gold is owned by the University of Texas Investment Management Co., or Utimco, which took delivery of 6,643 bars of the precious metal in 2011 amid concern that demand for it would overwhelm supply.

The proposed facility would also accept deposits from the public, and would provide a basis for a payments system in the state in the event of a “systemic dislocation in a national and international financial system,” according to the measure.

Should Texas take such a step, it would offer sovereign backing for deposits and make buying and storing gold easier, said Jim Rickards, senior managing director at Tangent Capital Partners LLC in New York and author of “Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis.” He said the coin measures, while impractical, have symbolic value.

“We are seeing a distinct movement back to a world where gold is considered money,” Rickards said.
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Now back to the insane asylum known as Euroland. With rising unemployment and an already collapsing economy, Portugal is now proposing to cut yet more spending from its budget. When it does, Portugal will join Greece in the Club Med death spiral. Sensible Portuguese will rapidly move their money out of Portuguese banks ahead of the coming bail-in later in the year.

"If ever there was an area in which to do the exact opposite of that which government and the media urge you to do, that area is the purchasing of gold."

Robert Ringer

Portugal Plans More Spending Cuts After Ruling on Salaries

By Joao Lima & Anabela Reis - Apr 8, 2013 6:33 AM GMT
Portugal will carry out more spending cuts this year after the Constitutional Court blocked a plan to suspend a monthly salary payment to state workers and pensioners.

“I will give instructions to the ministries to proceed with the necessary reductions in operating expenses to compensate for what was blocked by the Constitutional Court’s ruling,” Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho said in Lisbon yesterday. “The government does not accept more tax increases, which seems to be the solution that the Constitutional Court favors in its interpretation.”

Passos Coelho is battling rising joblessness and lower demand from European trading partners as he cuts spending and raises taxes to meet the terms of the country’s 78 billion-euro ($101 billion) aid plan from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund. The government on March 15 announced wider deficit targets as it forecast the economy will shrink twice as much as previously estimated this year.

The Constitutional Court’s ruling delays completion of the seventh review of the aid plan, and the corresponding disbursement of 2 billion euros won’t be paid until that review is concluded, Passos Coelho said. The prime minister said he’ll have to provide explanations to the troika of officials representing the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund.
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April 7, 2013, 9:51 p.m. ET

Greek Bank Merger Halted

Lenders Failed to Raise Sufficient Capital, Raised Worries About Large Size

ATHENS—Greece's two largest lenders are heading for state control after their merger was halted by the government over the weekend.

The unexpected move came after National Bank of Greece and Eurobank came up short in their plans to raise capital and amid fears by the country's international lenders that the combined entity could become too big to be bailed out by the government.

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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324504704578409190228421854.html?mod=WSJUK_hpp_LEFTTopWhatNews

Cyprus Woes Threaten East Europe Growth, Development Bank Says

By Agnes Lovasz - Apr 8, 2013 12:00 AM GMT
Cyprus’s bailout threatens slowing eastern European growth through trade and banking links if it sparks capital flight from the most indebted euro-area nations, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development said.

Another bout of uncertainty in Europe’s debt crisis may boost financing costs for banks and potentially trigger an outflow of “large” deposits and funding in countries with weaker lenders or sovereigns, EBRD Deputy Chief Economist Jeromin Zettelmeyer said in an April 5 interview in London.

Eastern Europe relied on foreign capital flows and easy access to credit and export markets to fuel growth of more than 5 percent a year before the global crisis of 2008. The Cyprus bailout, where international creditors forced losses on large depositors in exchange for a 10 billion-euro ($12.8 billion) aid package, may lead to capital flight and weaker growth in countries such as Italy and Spain, Zettelmeyer said.

“These are very important countries and they are very large and so if there’s a slowdown in the EU as a result of this it would certainly affect” the 29 eastern European countries where the EBRD lends, he said.
“The risks are higher than we thought and they are further to the downside than what we thought.”
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We end for today on Europe, with yet another explicit warning on the threat to Eurozone bank deposits. For now, says the EU’s Olli Rehn, it’s only the large bank deposits we’re after. Before it’s all over, it will be open season on all bank deposits and pensions, I suspect. The system is broken and they know it. Stay long physical precious metals.

EU's Rehn: Big depositors could suffer in future bank bailouts under new law

HELSINKI | Sat Apr 6, 2013 6:03am EDT
(Reuters) - Big bank depositors could take a hit under planned European Union law if a bank fails, the EU's economic affairs chief Olli Rehn said on Saturday, but noted that Cyprus's bailout model was exceptional.

"Cyprus was a special case ... but the upcoming directive assumes that investor and depositor liability will be carried out in case of a bank restructuring or a wind-down," Rehn, the European Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner, said in a TV interview with Finland's national broadcaster YLE.

"But there is a very clear hierarchy, at first the shareholders, then possibly the unprotected investments and deposits. However, the limit of 100,000 euros is sacred, deposits smaller than that are always safe."

The European Commission is currently drafting a directive on bank safety which would incorporate the issue of investor liability in member states' legislation.
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We end for the day with an excellent report From Toronto’s Sprott Group. A must read for anyone following current events in the decline of the western currencies.

"The international monetary order is more precarious by far today than it was in 1929. Then, gold was international money, incorruptible, unmanageable, and unchangeable. Today, the U.S. dollar serves as the international medium of exchange, managed by Washington politicians and Federal Reserve officials, manipulated from day to day, and serving political goals and ambitions. This difference alone sounds the alarm to all perceptive observers."

Hans F. Sennholz

Friday, April 5, 2013 David Franklin and David Baker

A Retort to SocGen’s Latest Gold Report

Société Générale (“SocGen”) recently published a special report entitled “The end of the gold era” that garnered far more attention than we think it deserved.  The majority of the report focused on SocGen’s “crash scenario” for gold wherein they suggest that gold could fall well below their 2013 target of US$1,375/oz. It also included a classic criticism that we’ve heard so many times before: that the gold price is in “bubble territory”. We have problems with both suggestions.

To begin, the report’s authors appear to view gold as a commodity, rather than as a currency. This is a common misconception that continues to plague most gold market analysis. Gold doesn’t really work as a commodity because it doesn’t get consumed like one. The vast majority of gold mined throughout history remains in existence today, and the total global gold stockpile grows in small increments every year through additional mine supply. This is also precisely why gold works so well as a currency. Total gold supply can only grow marginally, while fiat money supply can grow exponentially through printing programs. This is why gold’s monetary value is so important – it’s the only “currency” in play that is immune to government devaluation.
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"We are in a world of irredeemable paper money - a state of affairs unprecedented in history."

John Exter

At the Comex silver depositories Friday final figures were: Registered 43.39 Moz, Eligible 121.01 Moz, Total 164.40 Moz.  


Crooks and Scoundrels Corner
The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over. 

Today, run do not walk, away from Ireland if you’re a bank depositor in an Irish bank, says top analyst Reggie Middleton. Ireland needs yet another bank and sovereign bailout and this time round it’s the bank depositors turn to get embezzled. We haven’t seen anything yet.

"No other commodity enjoys as much universal acceptability and marketability as gold."

Hans F. Sennholz

Ireland, You May Very Well Be Bust & I Make No Apologies For What I'm About To Show You

Saturday, 06 April 2013 15:49

----I don't think it will be difficult to ascertain that Ireland may very well need another bailout, of both its banks and quite possibly the motherland herself. After Cyprus, we all know who'll pay for the bank bailout, right? Thank your deity that there are no other Irish banks that have somehow concealed their encumbrances, right? We'll see. After all, another big bank with big secrets may be enough to push Ireland over the edge, no?
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"It is important to remember that government interference always means either violent action or the threat of such action.....taxes are paid because the taxpayers are afraid of offering resistance to the tax gatherers. They know that any disobedience or resistance is hopeless. As long as this is the state of affairs, the government is able to collect the money that it wants to spend. Government is in the last resort the employer of armed men, of policemen, gendarmes, soldiers, prison guards, and hangmen. The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning."

Ludwig von Mises

The monthly Coppock Indicators finished March:
DJIA: +119 Up. NASDAQ: +132 Up. SP500: +157 Up.  Another Fed bubble grows.

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