The CFTC is no doubt absolutely within its rights to question the use of certain prices as reference points (aka "marks") in US transactions. Joining the International Roundtable on Financial Benchmarks three weeks ago, its commissioner Bart Chilton said he also thought many other markets might deserve attention, too. But quite what a Washington commission overseeing the US futures markets might achieve – or hope to – as regards the London Fixings as a process, however, we can't imagine. Full Story
By: Adam Hamilton, Zeal Intelligence - 15 March, 2013
Gold miners have to be the most hated sector in the markets these days. At best they’ve been forgotten as the hyper-complacent general stock markets continue to inexplicably levitate. At worst they’re utterly despised. But the breathtaking bearishness choking them has left gold stocks incredibly cheap relative to their profits. This is a dream come true for battle-hardened contrarians who really want to buy low. Full Story
By: Richard (Rick) Mills, Ahead of the herd - 15 March, 2013
Other than picking up some more gold and silver bullion I’m concentrating on identifying and buying a few quality junior resource companies as investment vehicles to take advantage of what I think I know regarding the future for precious metals and commodities. There are a dozen high quality juniors on my radar screen - are there a few junior resource companies, with exceptional management teams operating in politically safe jurisdictions, on your radar screen? Full Story
Libertarians commendably focus on maximizing Economic Freedom and Individual Liberty. Who, after all, wants not to be economically and politically free? But there is considerable dispute even among libertarians about what freedom does, or should entail regarding a variety of crucial issues such as “free trade,” immigration, and the proper role of government. Full Story
Not long ago we produced a graph which was really just the gold price graph turned upside down. It was a graph which showed currencies priced in gold as opposed to the usual – gold priced in currencies. As several banks and the media seem to relish the thought of a recovery taking place and death to the bull market, I thought it might be worth bringing those graphs back out to remind ourselves just how far we’ve had to come to get here. Full Story
Summing up, we could see additional short-term strengths in the USD Index along with weakness in the Euro Index. Neither will probably move very much, and there may be little to no negative impact to gold and the rest of the precious metals sector. It used to be the case that when the USD Index and stocks moved higher, precious metals prices declined. Since the most recent cyclical turning point for the USD Index however, this has no longer been the case. Full Story
Gold has failed to break below its 2011 and 2012 lows and that is a telling sign, especially in the face of this pervasive bearish sentiment. Gold looks likely to close at a four week high and we expect it to challenge $1600 in the coming days. A close below $1620 would essentially confirm that the bottom is in. Full Story
The currency by which one measures value will be the ultimate way of measuring risk. Furthermore, the recent increase in currency dilution due to rampant money printing has and will continue to result in currency debasement. Full Story
Yesterday, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the regulator who ostensibly regulates the banks and major financial institutions who participate in the futures and commodities trading business, announced they were going to examine whether prices are being manipulated in the “world’s largest gold market”, according to a story in the Wall Street Journal. Full Story
By: Chris Powell, Secretary/Treasurer, GATA - 15 March, 2013
Christian isn't the challenge. The challenge is to embolden financial news organizations to try committing journalism to expose central banking's many deceptions. Emboldening such journalism is a slow process, but Christian performs another great service for that process when he demonstrates that, with gold, central banking has no defense at all. Full Story
Have cycles have been overpowered by central bank intervention? This is a question that many investors have been asking in view of the stock market's relentless strength since November. Some of the short- and intermediate-term cycles that have been historically reliable for predicting periods of strength or weakness in equity markets have undoubtedly been muted – or in some cases cancelled out completely – by the Fed’s ultra-loose money policy of the last couple of years. Are we therefore to assume that the longer-term yearly cycles will also be annulled by the Fed? Full Story
If anyone ever wondered why the US economy is so sluggish they need not look any further than the velocity of money or velocity of currency as it has sometimes known. The truth is that money is simply not moving through the economy at a good pace. As the chart shows the velocity of money has fallen to levels never seen since they began tracking it back in the late 1950’s. This is something akin to presenting a great looking hamburger on the economy only to discover it is just a bun without the beef. Full Story
Well, it occurs to me that for all the times we've criticized the counterproductive, foolish, or just plain wrong ideas of others and have sometimes offered sounder alternatives, I've never fleshed out a picture of what I would do if I could call the shots. Full Story
The media encourages us to believe that practically everything in our economy is either good or getting better. Another way of stating the media hype is “all of our problems will be solved through the combined efforts of our capable politicians coupled with the wisdom and competent management of The Federal Reserve.” Full Story
Led by near pervasive and still-growing bullish sentiment, the broad market is continuing upward on its course and is culminating with ‘dumb money’ sentiment and momentum being set to over bullish levels. The last time there was such consensus on the economy and the stock market may well have been in 2000. Full Story
By: Chris Powell, Secretary/Treasurer, GATA - 14 March, 2013
Your secretary/treasurer was interviewed today on "Squawk Box Asia" with Bernie Lo on CNBC Asia in Hong Kong. The interview, seven minutes long, may be notable less for anything your secretary/treasurer said than for Lo's acknowledgement that the gold investment world has been mostly turned into paper and hallucination. So word does seem to be getting around. Full Story
Price-rigging and deceptive advertising are so prevalent among broadband carriers that getting a good deal can pose quite a challenge — not only for the unschooled customer, but for the kind of shoppers who read Consumer Reports each month from cover to cover. I know this because I recently compared carrier deals when my monthly Comcast bill threatened to hit $300. Full Story
By: Julian D. W. Phillips, Gold/Silver Forecaster - Global Watch - 13 March, 2013
We have seen a great deal in the media about the best place to hold your gold, so would like to address the issue in real terms. So many assumptions are made by investors holding gold and silver that are not based on either real experience or on an understanding of how the monetary authorities work, leaving precious metal investors wide open to losing their gold to their governments, despite what they thought were adequate steps to prevent such an eventuality. Full Story
SO I HAS just left a company where I had accumulated a nice amount of retirement funds in my 401K plan. Like most people, for me a nice amount is any money that somehow hasn't gone to pay for college tuition. So I found myself for the first time in a long time needing to consider what to do with a small chunk of change. Full Story
The Fed’s let the inflation genie out of the box. It’s not going to show up in the CPI because US Government changes the CPI regularly to underplay the threat of inflation. However, if you look at what’s happening in the real economy with corporations, all of the warning signs area already there. Full Story
For at least two thousand years, the Chinese of Sichuan, in south-central China, have dug or drilled holes to tap a briny aquifer, the trapped remains of an ancient inland sea. They boiled down the brine to make crystals of sodium chloride – salt – a food preservative and seasoning so critical in the days before refrigeration that whole civilizations flourished or waned based on its commerce. Full Story
Bitcoin is still apparently a great trade—a speculation—as it has risen more than 12% even from when I recorded that video. Bitcoin is still useful for certain transactions particularly across borders, and especially for those people unfortunate to live in countries with censorship, capital controls, or in which some kinds of goods are prohibited. But it’s not money. It is not the good to hoard as the core of one’s savings, if one does not like the rate of interest or trust the banking system or feel comfortable about the future. The good for this purpose remains gold. Full Story
By: John Mauldin, Millennium Wave Advisors - 13 March, 2013
There are some who worry whether the path that Argentina has taken to monetary ruin on multiple occasions (and that it seems intent on taking again) is one that the US may also find itself on. That worry has crossed my mind a few times, I must confess. Today we will look at Argentina more in depth. From a monetary perspective, it deserves attention. And once again there will be opportunity. Full Story
By: Chris Powell, Secretary/Treasurer, GATA - 12 March, 2013
In their new commentary, Lee Quaintance and Paul Brodsky of QB Asset Management in New York argue that the Federal Reserve's only plausible exit from "quantitative easing" is not selling bonds and junky assets but currency and debt devaluation based on a great upward repricing of gold and a general tendering for gold by the central bank at that new price, even if this would only start a new era of debt creation in advance of still another currency and debt devaluation in a few decades. Oh, well, as Quaintance and Brodsky note, this would be only what has been done before. Full Story
By: Chris Powell, Secretary/Treasurer, GATA - 12 March, 2013
Your secretary/treasurer is scheduled to be interviewed on by Bernie Lo on the "Squawk Box Asia" program on CNBC Asia at about 7:40 Thursday morning Hong Kong time. If circumstances allow your secretary/treasurer will try to rebut the enduring cliche about gold, articulated again all over the Internet this week by market analyst and investment adviser Przemyslaw Radomski. Full Story
ROME has now been without a government since mid-December. Italy's politicians will only start to talk later this week about doing something about last month's failed elections. Barely a month after Benedict XVI resigned, the Catholic world will have a new pope before Italy gets a prime minister. It's lucky there is no rush. Full Story
I am allowing my creative side a break this week, instead focusing on raw technicals for the S&P 500 (SPX), precious metals shares, and gold since prices are vexing important long-term support(s). In terms of what should be one’s most rudimentary observations concerning present conditions in the aforementioned markets, obviously stocks are at 5-year highs and pressing higher, precious metals are at multi-year lows and approaching long-term supports, and nobody knows what to expect next because things are not going as expected. Full Story
Dennis explains what can happen if you don’t take responsibility for your retirement finances and the simple steps anyone can take to get started. He offers a free copy of his Money Every Month income plan that explains how to build steady monthly income from investments mentioned in the plan. Full Story
Gold and silver stocks seem poised for a massive rally. I covered all my gold bullion short positions yesterday, and bought silver stocks. Whether the recent lows represent the “ultimate bottom”, or there is a bit more downside to come, probably doesn’t matter. Please click here now. You are viewing the daily gold chart, and a near-immediate move towards $1620-$1625, looks very likely. From a technical perspective, I would prefer to see gold decline to the $1400-$1450 area (roughly a 10% drop). Full Story
Financial writer and best-selling author Peter Sander sits down with portfolio manager Axel Merk for insights on investment considerations in light of the risks posed to the greenback. Full Story
As human beings we try to intellectualize and get to the bottom of things. We seek to find meaning in everything. There must be a reason for what is happening at any given time. Take for example the Dow’s stellar performance and gold’s lousy performance even as monetary policy has gone reckless on a global scale. This goes against everything that humans who deal with the financial markets think they know. But what if we are just getting back into symmetry? Full Story
As a young man, I voraciously read George Orwell’s “1984”, Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” and Alvin Toffler's trilogy which included "Future Shock"', "The Third Wave" and "Power Shift". During the era of the Vietnam War, I wondered seriously about the future and how it was destined to unfold. Now being considerably older, I have the vantage point to reflect back on my early ruminations and expectations. Full Story
The end of civilization is already here. Most of humanity has been turned into an unthinking mass of economic zombies that are looking to feast on the still living flesh of the few survivors. This may explain the increasing popularity or obsession with all things zombie. From fiction to pub crawls, the zombie apocalypse seems to be on a lot of minds, probably as an unconcious manifestation of economic reality. Full Story
By: Steve Saville, The Speculative Investor - 12 March, 2013
As eventually happens to every dog, over the past three months the world's policy-making fraternity has been having its day. It has been 'fantasyland' for the Ben Bernankes, Mario Draghis, Barack Obamas and Shinzo Abes of the world, with everything seemingly going right for this motley bunch of miscreants. Full Story
The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed a steep wall of worry and last Tuesday returned to its all-time high from late 2007. The Dow finished at 14253.77, topping the previous record set in October 2007 and is already up 8.8% for the year. The Fed’s expansive monetary policy to prop up the economy has kept stocks climbing higher despite a less than glowing global economy. By pumping trillions into the financial system, the Fed has convinced investors it will provide a safety net for future shocks. In addition, by keeping interest rates extremely low, the Fed is forcing investors to seek higher returns in the stock market. Full Story
Tonight’s chart is a daily bar chart for gold that shows all the consolidation patterns since hitting the top of the rectangle back in October of last year at 1800 or so. If gold was ready to break below the bottom rail of the big rectangle, today would have been a good time to do so. Because it didn’t breakdown this morning that tells me the sideways correction that has been going on already for almost 3 weeks now, still has more work to do. Full Story
Every once in a while, someone utters a statement that suddenly galvanizes the issue at hand. In the fable “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” Hans Christian Andersen tells of two weavers who convince the emperor that their special clothing for him is invisible only to those unworthy. When the emperor parades in front of his subjects wearing the special clothing, a child cries out the obvious, “he isn’t wearing any clothes at all.” That’s the first thing that came to my mind when I read of the US Attorney General’s words before a Senate hearing this week. Full Story
The quantity theory of money and its accompanying equation of exchange are generally accepted as defining the relationship between money and prices. The equation has been expressed a number of ways, always including “velocity of circulation”, which is a variable essential to balance the equation. Full Story
It is my contention that the 70-year debt supercycle has come to an end. To put the current financial situation in perspective, here's a long-term history of the debt-to-GDP ratio, which reached a record high at the beginning of the current crisis. It was a dramatic change in 2009, unlike anything since the aftermath of the Great Depression. Full Story
By: Chris Powell, Secretary/Treasurer, GATA - 11 March, 2013
Will the gold and silver mining industry stand up for itself and its shareholders that much? So far the answer has been no -- and while GATA has its small core of loyal supporters in the industry, most companies and most of the mining industry's great and rich men whose names you see all the time in the financial press (and in GATA's own dispatches) have been solicited by GATA and have refused us even the time of day. Full Story
Few exchange-traded investments have visited more pain on shareholders in recent years than bullion stocks. Even now, amidst a spectacular surge in the broad averages, gold and silver mining shares have done little better than languish, making the pain even more acute for long-term precious-metal bulls. Is it time to bail out of them? We think not, even though it looks like two popular mining vehicles, GDX and GDXJ, may have further to fall before they hit bottom. Full Story
Last week I outlined a very bearish larger picture for the precious metals. I haven’t seen anything to change that view occur this past week with the exception of palladium. All we are doing now is building a base which should resolve lower. I expect gold and silver to move lower Monday. Full Story
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