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Is Scarborough Shoal Worth a War?

by Patrick J. Buchanan
LewRockwell.com

If China begins to reclaim and militarize Scarborough Shoal, says Philippines President Benigno S. Aquino III, America must fight.

Should we back down, says Aquino, the United States will lose “its moral ascendancy, and also the confidence of one of its allies.”

And what is Scarborough Shoal?

A cluster of rocks and reefs, 123 miles west of Subic Bay, that sits astride the passageway out of the South China Sea into the Pacific and is well within Manila’s 200-mile exclusive economic zone.

Continue Reading at LewRockwell.com…

The “Markets” Are A Total Farce: Stocks Pushed Up – Gold Pushed Down By The Fed

by David Kranzler
Investment Research Dynamics

I described the other day what a circus the inter-FOMC meeting periods have become. One by one Fed clowns appear to describe an economy at full employment and threaten us with another one-quarter of one percent Fed Funds rate hike. Since this process has started last Monday, the S&P 500 has been flat but gold has been taken down methodically about $80, or 6.7%. The mining stocks as represented by the HUI have been dropped 12% from their high last week.

Yesterday the circus took on a new dimension. SF Fed John Williams was once again out promoting rate hikes this year and even more rate hikes next year – LINK. St Louis Fed clown Bullard was out yesterday pontificating that low rates for too long could be risky – LINK. You don’t say, James?

Continue Reading at InvestmentResearchDynamics.com…

The Global Monetary System Has Devalued 47% Over The Last 10 Years

from Zero Hedge

Authored by Paul Brodsky via Macro-Allocation.com,

We have argued the inevitability of Fed-administered hyperinflation, prompted by a global slowdown and its negative impact on the ability to service and repay systemic debt. One of the most politically expedient avenues policy makers could take would be to inflate the debt away in real terms through coordinated currency devaluations against gold, the only monetize-able asset on most central bank balance sheets. To do so they would create new base money with which to purchase gold at pre-arranged fixed exchange prices, which would raise the general price levels in their currencies and across the world to levels that diminish the relative burden of debt repayment (while not sacrificing debt covenants).

Continue Reading at ZeroHedge.com…

‘Things Could Explode’: Why Pressure is Mounting as Venezuela’s Economy Melts Down

Speculation centres on when President Nicolas Maduro will be removed from power

by John Otis
CBC

Popular uprising? Recall referendum? Coup d’état?

Venezuela’s economic meltdown has become so dire that few political analysts believe President Nicolas Maduro will manage to finish his term, which ends in 2019.

Instead, their speculation now centres on when and how the leader of Venezuela’s socialist government will be removed from power.

A former bus driver, union organizer, foreign minister and vice-president, Maduro replaced revolutionary leader Hugo Chavez upon his death from cancer in 2013.

Since then, prices for oil, Venezuela’s main export, have tumbled. The currency has collapsed, while expropriations and other socialist policies have led to falling production, the world’s highest inflation rate and chronic shortages of medicine and basic foodstuffs like milk, meat and flour.

Continue Reading at CBC.ca…

Hold on a Moment: The European Corpse May Be Rising from the Slab

Draghi’s “quantitative easing” seems to be working in slowly reviving the European economy

by Jeremy Warner
Telegraph.co.uk

As a basically Eurosceptic nation, it is sometimes said, Britain will only vote for Europe when it can look longingly across the Channel and see that the economy is notably better over there than it is here. So it was during the last referendum on membership of what was then the European Economic Community. Back in the 1970s, Britain seemed locked in a seemingly permanent cycle of economic decline. Contrast that with the steadily rising living standards of the time in Germany, and even France and Italy, and it is not hard to see why the overwhelming majority of voters thought they’d be better off in than out.

One of the problems the Remain campaign has got this time around in making a positive case for Europe is that it is no longer possible to point to any such contrast, and actually hasn’t been for a long time now. Some parts of Europe, notably Germany, are still doing fine, and arguably better than the UK, having experienced a rather swifter and more rounded recovery from the crisis than us.

Continue Reading at Telegraph.co.uk…

Crude Oil Rockets to Near $50 a Barrel as Data Hints at U.S. Supply Drop

API data shows 5.1-million-barrel drop in crude supplies

by Jenny W. Hsu
Market Watch

Crude oil prices marched toward $50 in early Asian trade Wednesday as investors anticipate a likely decrease in the U.S. crude inventories and ongoing supply outages elsewhere in the world, which could curtail global supply.

On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures for delivery in July CLN6, +1.03% traded at $49.38 a barrel, up $0.76, or 1.6% in the Globex electronic session, the highest intraday level since mid-October when prices was last above $50. July Brent crude LCON6, +1.01% on London’s ICE Futures exchange rose $0.72, or 1.5%, to $49.33 a barrel.

U.S. oil prices have surged more than 85% from their mid-February lows on expectations that the global crude glut that sent prices plunging in mid-2014 is set to shrink. Production has started to fall in some regions including the U.S. due to spending cuts, and unexpected outages in other countries are keeping additional barrels off the market.

Continue Reading at MarketWatch.com…

What Will Sink the US Auto Boom?

by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street

It’s already in the works and goes far beyond subprime.

The auto industry is crucial to the US economy and jobs. Auto sales account for 21% of total retail sales so far this year. They’re up 4.5% year-over-year. New Vehicle sales in 2015 hit an all-time record, even as the rest of brick-and-mortar retail was weak.

The industry – including component makers and other suppliers – account for a good part of US manufacturing. Transporting over 17 million new vehicles a year from assembly plants or ports of entry to cities around the country is big business for struggling railroads. Transporting them from rail yards to dealer lots is big business for specialized trucking companies. They also haul millions of used vehicles every year to and from auctions where rental-car and leasing companies dispose of their vehicles. Many of the jobs across the industry pay well.

Continue Reading at WolfStreet.com…

Why Are Americans Getting Married an Average of 7 Years Later Than They Did in the 1950s?

by Michael Snyder
The Economic Collapse Blog

Americans are getting married later and later in life these days. So precisely why is this happening? As you will see below, the average age when men and women first get married in the United States is getting perilously close to 30, but in the middle of the last century is was close to 20. There has been a dramatic cultural shift, and this has resulted in a whole host of unintended consequences. Because even though people are getting married later, they are still engaging in behaviors that in previous generations were considered reserved for those that had made a permanent commitment. The family has always been one of the foundational institutions in society, but now it is breaking down at a very alarming pace. Our young people have been trained to think that getting married, having children and raising a family are not important priorities, and this is showing up in a myriad of various ways.

Continue Reading at TheEconomicCollapseBlog.com…

Can the Complex Break Out Sooner Than Most Believe?

by Avi Gilburt
Gold Seek

Back in April, the Fed made it clear that they want to hike interest rates several times this year. And, when the metals complex began to rise after that announcement, many were certain that the Fed was the catalyst that made the complex rise. This past week, the Fed released the minutes from its last meeting, which contained no surprises, and restated their plans. Yet, instead of the market reacting in the same way as its last statement of raising rates this year, the metals went in the exact opposite direction.

I have written about this ad nauseam through the years, and many still do not believe me. But, the Fed does not control the metals complex, nor does the direction of interest rates control the metals complex. It has been, and will always be, sentiment driven.

Continue Reading at GoldSeek.com…

Update: Q1 2016 Canadian Silver Maple Sales Surge to Highest Record Ever

by Steve St. Angelo
SRSRocco Report

The Royal Canadian Mint just published its Q1 2016 Report, and the silver bullion coin sales figures were stunning to say the least. Not only did sales of Canadian Silver Maple Leafs surpass its previous record during the third quarter last year, it did so by a wide margin.

Why is this such a big deal? Because Q1 2016 sales of Silver Maples topped the Q3 2015 record, without surging demand and product shortages. Last year, there was a huge spike in silver retail investment demand due to the supposed “Shemitah” or the collapse of the broader stock markets. Investors piled into silver in a big way as they perceived a year-end market crash was inevitable.

During last August and September, some websites stated 2 month delivery wait times for certain products such as Silver Eagles and Silver Maples. With the huge spike in demand, sales of Canadian Silver Maples reached 9.5 million oz (Moz) in Q3 2015. Although, once investors became more relaxed as the broader markets turned around, demand for physical silver investment cooled down. Thus, Silver Maple sales declined to 9.1 Moz in the last quarter of 2015.

Continue Reading at SRSRoccoReport.com…

Death Crosses Across The Board Are IRREFUTABLE Stock Market Sell Signals

by I.M. Vronsky
Market Oracle

A recent insightful and timely article by internationally known analyst Graham Summers galvanized my attention. Graham’s focus was using Weekly Charts to demonstrate the accurate forecasts of Bear Markets in the US. His stock sell signal is based upon the Death Cross definition where the 50-week moving average falls below the 100-week moving average. Summers’s astute analysis speaks for itself:

[…] My analysis below is in total support of Summers’ prophetic thesis that “…this Death Cross formation has only hit TWICE before. Both times were when major bubbles burst and stocks Crashed.”

Continue Reading at MarketOracle.co.uk…

Michael Belkin Warns Central Banks Are Lighting a Rocket Under the Gold Price

from King World News

Top Advisor to the largest sovereign wealth funds and institutions in the world, Michael Belkin, warns central banks are lighting a rocket under the gold price.

Michael Belkin: “The GDX has doubled (+104%) since its January 19th low. Gold, silver and gold/silver mining stocks have commenced a new long-term bull market. It’s like buying the Nasdaq in April 2009. Meanwhile, global stock indexes have been in a broad topping process for years, our global composite stock index stands at the same level as it did in December 2013, two and one half years ago. The trend has not been your friend in stock indexes, every rally has fizzled out for buy-and-hold stock market investors…

Continue Reading at KingWorldNews.com…

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts – Pre-Options Expiration Posturing on the Comex

from Jesse’s Café Américain

Let’s see, oh yes, tomorrow is the option expiration for the active June gold contract on the Comex. And the last two days gold has been pounded lower in Comex trading. How unusual.

The pundits will point to the ‘stronger dollar’, and so I have included that chart here so one can see its very modest increase.

I could also look at the distribution of puts and calls for June, but why bother? And I have been very busy today, doing ordinary things of much more consequence.

Most of what is being done by the neo-con leadership of the US these days in their attempts to rule the world, both financially and militarily, is less than an illusion but only a little more than dust. In other words, a vanity. Old as Babylon and evil as hell.

Continue Reading at JessesCrossroadsCafe.Blogspot.ca…

Harvey Organ’s Daily Gold & Silver Report – 2016.05.24

GLD loses 3.86 tonnes of gold from its inventory/At the comex, the front May delivery month once again increases the amount of gold standing to 6.8874 tonnes/Last night Moody’s downgrades Deutsche bank to 2 notches above junk/Richmond Mfg Fed index shows biggest contraction ever

by Harvey Organ
Harvey Organ’s Blog

i) the May gold contract is a non active contract. Yet we started the month with 5.67 tonnes of gold standing and it has increased every single day and today sits at 6.68 tonnes of gold standing:

The amount standing for gold at the comex in May is simply outstanding at 6.8740 tonnes. The previous May 2015, we had only .08 tonnes standing so you can certainly witness the difference as the demand for gold by investors/sovereigns is on a torrid pace. This makes the excitement for June gold that much more intense as more players are refusing fiat and demanding only physical metal. I will be reporting daily as to how which is standing for delivery through the active month of June. June is the second largest delivery month after December.

Let us have a look at the data for today.

Continue Reading at HarveyOrganBlog.com…

The Gold Mine Barrick Might Regret Selling

by Chris Powell
GATA.org

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

Resource company publicist Tommy Humphreys of CEO.CA today issued a report that may be most interesting for showing how insanely cheap the junior gold mining business remains despite the rise in the monetary metal’s price since the start of the year.

The report is about K92 Mining, which last year acquired a high-grade gold property in Papua New Guinea from Barrick Gold for $2 million, a tiny fraction of the $141.5 million Barrick paid for the property in 2007 before spending another $140 million developing the property, only to start casting off assets and reducing debt as the gold price was pounded down.

Continue Reading at GATA.org…

Bin Laden’s Advice on Gold?

by Jody Chudley
Daily Reckoning

There have been more than a few awful people working on Wall Street and in the financial world. Bernie Madoff comes to mind. He ruined the lives of quite a few people with his colossal Ponzi scheme. The predatory lenders that created the U.S. housing crisis might also qualify.

How about the guys at the top of Enron who sold boatloads of shares while the employee pension plan was directed into the sinking ship?

All of them terrible, but none of them compare to one particular “financial adviser”….Osama bin Laden.

In 2010, bin Laden and al-Qaida came into a $5 million cash windfall. Where did it come from? Ransom proceeds from a kidnapping. Noble work if there ever was some.

Continue Reading at DailyReckoning.com…

Forget a Dollar Collapse…This Is a Much Bigger Threat to Your Wealth Right Now

by Justin Spittler
Casey Research

It’s an immediate threat to your wealth right now…and it’s another sign we’re headed for a major financial crisis.

What we’re covering today stems from the Fed’s “monetary experiment” that began in 2008.

As you may know, that year, the Fed dropped its key interest rate to effectively zero. It then started borrowing and printing trillions of dollars.

This experiment has been nothing short of a disaster.

Continue Reading at CaseyResearch.com…

UPS Fears $3.8 Billion Liability Over Bankrupt Central States Pension Plan

by Mike ‘Mish’ Shedlock
Mish Talk

In 2007, UPS dumped its pensioners into the Central States Pension Fund, a fund now destined for bankruptcy.

As part of the collective bargaining agreement, UPS agreed to pick up future payments if benefits are cut.

That provision may cost UPS $3.8 billion or more.

Let’s backtrack and fill in some details.

In December, the Central States Pension Fund informed the US Treasury department that the fund would run out of money in 10 years at the current rate of $3.46 in pension benefits for every $1 it receives from employers.

Continue Reading at MishTalk.com…

How the TSA Kills Hundreds of People Every Year

by Joseph T. Salerno
Mises.org

Experts increasingly agree that the TSA is inept and has not actually prevented any terrorist attacks on airplanes. Recently, Homeland Security sent a team to attempt to smuggle guns and bombs onto planes. The so-called “red team” succeeded on 67 out of 70 tries, or more than 95 percent of the time! Bruce Schneier, a security expert, reportedly found basically zero evidence the agency has prevented any attacks.” Even in the widely publicized (by the TSA) case of Kevin Brown, the TSA didn’t prevent an airplane from being blown up, because Brown was caught trying to check luggage containing materials for making a pipe bomb. But the TSA has never touted a case in which they caught someone actually trying to bring down a plane. (They claim that this is for national security reasons, which oddly did not apply to the Brown case.)

Not only is there an absence of evidence that the TSA saves lives, there is evidence that it may actually cause a significant number of deaths. In one paper, economists Garrick Blalock, Vrinda Kadiyali, and Daniel Simon estimated that, all other factors held constant, baggage screening procedures implemented after 9/11 reduced passenger volume by 6 percent overall and by 9 percent on planes departing from the nation’s 50 busiest airports. Interestingly, the study also found that the introduction of federalized passenger screening did not significantly reduce passenger volume.

Continue Reading at Mises.org…

Gold Rush Losing Glitter

by Kurt Kallaus
Financial Sense

Smart Money Shifts to Gold

With Billionaires George Soros, Stanley Druckenmiller, Paul Singer and what seems like every analyst on the planet talking up Gold, what can go wrong? In fact, it’s impressive that the alleged “Smart Money” has also surged into Gold ETF’s (exchange-traded funds holding Gold assets). Looking back over 7 years there is an impressive correlation of appreciating Gold prices when ETF funds attract positive quarterly investment inflows and falling prices when the tide rolls back out. This is hardly a leading indicator, but at least the previous Bull and Bear markets showing here illustrate rather persistent up and down cycle correlation until the party is over. It’s likely that any future Gold ETF inflows will be reduced compared to the stellar rush to buy gold in the 1st quarter 2016. Was this mostly Billionaires and Bear market positioned fund managers suddenly rushing in to grab prices as Oil doubled in price from its January low? OR is it as Bulls like to say: the debt levels and banking system have reached extremes that are about to send the US Dollar plunging and precious metals soaring? We think this first leg is merely a surge from hedge funds being underinvested and repositioning to hedge the general commodity rally led by oil and the implied inflation weighting.

Continue Reading at FinancialSense.com…

Why Do So Many Preachers in America Refuse to Talk About Hell?

by Michael Snyder
End of the American Dream

When was the last time you heard a sermon about hell? Just think about that for a moment. Once upon a time in America, preachers all across the land regularly unleashed fiery sermons that directly confronted people with the reality of heaven and hell. But today, that has completely changed. In fact, there are some very well-known ministers in this country that purposely avoid ever using the word “hell” because it might offend someone. It turns out that “happy church” can be a very lucrative business model, and many people seem to love the “me first” prosperity gospel that has infected virtually all of the major denominations at this point. So there are countless messages about “blessing”, “breakthrough” and how God can make your life better, and very, very little preaching about sin, judgment, the cross and the urgency that we should feel to reach lost souls with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Continue Reading at EndOfTheAmericanDream.com…

Expert Warns Of Venezuela-style Hyperinflation: “This Will Not End Well For The United States”

by Mac Slavo
SHTF Plan

Though completely outside the realm of possibility for an entertained, well fed, and oblivious American public dependent on ever-growing debt to make ends meet, there are serious economic, financial and monetary headwinds set to flip the entire system upside down. If there’s one thing we can learn from the collapse of monetary systems in Zimbabwe, Argentina, and most recently Venezuela, it’s that printing money only works until you lose the confidence of your creditors and the public at large, at which point the whole thing detonates with such velocity and speed that millions are left scrounging for even the most basic of necessities.

According to K92 Mining President Bryan Slusarchuk, this is exactly the kind of scenario Americans should be concerned with because central banks and governments around the world have not only printed obscene sums of money to keep the system afloat, but used even more worthless foreign currency reserves to further prop up their own. As Slusarchuk notes, there is absolutely nothing of real value backing any of it, which spells disaster for Western nations:

Continue Reading at SHTFPlan.com…