The global macroeconomic – and geopolitical – situation is deteriorating so rapidly, it is literally impossible for my hyper-stimulated brain to slow down. It’s still Thursday night and I wanted to pen a few observations, starting with today’s “are you kidding” manipulation moment. Full Story
Precious metals miners have successfully digested their sharp gains from early summer. The miners have continued to hold above key retracements as well as 200-day moving averages that are now sloping up. The miners, despite some fear from market participants remain in position for a September breakout to the upside. Full Story
By: Nick Giambruno, Senior Editor, InternationalMan.com - 29 August, 2014
These “worst in the developed world” tax policies are clearly hurting the global competitiveness of American companies. Being deemed a “US Person” for tax purposes is like trying to swim with a lifejacket made of lead. It should come as no surprise that an increasing number of productive people and companies are seeking to shed this burden so they can keep their heads above water. At this point, it’s more than just a trickle—it’s an established trend in motion. Full Story
In recent months talking heads, disappointed with the lack of economic recovery, have turned their attention to wages. If only wages could grow, they say, there would be more demand for goods and services: without wage growth, economies will continue to stagnate. Full Story
The United States, and every country, is subject to a monetary authority and legal tender laws. Here in the U.S. we have the Federal Reserve, a central bank that plans money and credit. The Fed thought they had perfected their planning (but of course it cannot be perfected). They thought they had ended the boom and bust cycle, and brought us into a brave new era, their so-called great moderation that ended in 2008. All they really did was manage the banking system to the brink of insolvency. Full Story
The current yellow box is an exact duplicate of the 2010/11 box, which came with an over bought MACD crossed down. The breakdown candle implies that September would be the month that a break UP candle comes into play if this relationship has any predictive power. Taking it further, as also noted in the previous post, the Ukraine noise does not help the sector and indeed could hurt in the short-term, because it keeps the wrong gold bugs on the tout. So NFTRH keeps open some minor downside targets. Full Story
By: Chris Powell, Secretary/Treasurer, GATA - 28 August, 2014
Examining the astounding and continuing downward trend of interest rates that has brought some rates into negative territory, the TF Metals Report's Turd Ferguson postulates today that gold and silver prices won't be going any lower, regardless of the charting done by technical analysts. Ferguson's commentary is headlined "ZIRP Morphs to NIRP" and it's posted at the TF Metals Report here... Full Story
The current bubbles in financial assets -- in equities and bonds of all grades and quality -- raging in every major market across the globe are no accident. They are a deliberate creation. The intentional results of policy. Therefore, when they burst, we shouldn't regard the resulting damage as some freak act of nature or other such outcome outside of our control. To reiterate, the carnage will be the very predictable result of some terribly shortsighted decision-making and defective logic. Full Story
European Central Bank Head, Mario Draghi recently signaled Eurozone QE is Dead Ahead. And the World has yet to deal with the Consequences of past and ongoing Fed, Japanese, and Chinese Monetary Policies. The coming Consequences of Central Bank QE and other Policies are reflected in the following Major Investors’ Actions and Analysts recommendations. Full Story
The American Legion sponsored a carnival every summer when I was a young lad. My dad was a legionnaire, so each year I had a job. Beginning at age 12, I hauled soft drinks and food to the various concession booths well into the night, which probably violated some labor laws. Full Story
Have you ever seen something and thought facetiously to yourself "what a great idea"? I remember so many of these situations in all facets of life, let's look at a few of these in the financial world and then look at the very latest braniac proposal. Just since the turn of the century we have seen program after program that was sure to "fix" the problem. "The problem" of course is at least twofold, our money is fake and too much of it has been borrowed. Full Story
Keith Phillips, a managing director and head of Cowen & Company's Mining Investment Banking Group, says strong companies with solid balance sheets are on the hunt for precious metals development projects or small producers trading at steep discounts. In this interview with The Gold Report, Phillips explains that these juniors represent unprecedented value for acquirers with longer-term goals, and he tracks some potential M&A prey. Full Story
Ian Gordon created Longwave Analytics, which studies the Longwave principle, by which economies obey long-term cyclical trends of expansion and contraction. Eric Sprott is an avid reader -- he suggested I interview Ian Gordon for his take on the role of Kondratiev’s ‘long wave cycle’ in explaining the economic environment we are seeing today. Full Story
I have had many people tell me they agree with my thought process on events but don't understand "why" or "how" the financial system has held together. Why of course is the easy part, no one wants to see the system come apart at the seams, especially the ones running the casino and benefitting the most from it. I think the better question is "when". I am constantly asked when I think we will see a systemic cascade and my standard answer is "it should have been two (or more) years ago as the question has not been "if" but when for at least that long. Full Story
Since the early 2000s, when gold’s most recent bull market began, periods of stagnation like the one we are in now have reaped the highest rewards for the patient buyer. The lesson here is one as old as the gold market itself: The time to buy is when the market is quiet. As an old friend and client used to say (he recently passed away) when the market was stuck in the $300 range: It is not a question of if but when. Full Story
By: Chris Powell, Secretary/Treasurer, GATA - 27 August, 2014
Three years ago GATA more or less won its freedom-of-information lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, in which GATA sought access to the Fed's records involving gold swaps. While the court found that most of the Fed's records involving gold swaps were exempt from disclosure under the law, GATA's initial inquiry to the Fed produced an admission that the Fed indeed has secret gold swap arrangements with foreign banks... Full Story
Gold has gone down for nearly three years, while the stock market has gone up for well over five years. The reversal may not occur tomorrow or next month, but it will occur. This is, in my opinion, a time for caution in the stock and bond markets and for purchases of gold and silver. It is better to leave the Wall Street party early than to crowd the exit doors with about 500 million others who overstayed their welcome at the Wall Street “stocks always go up” extravaganza. Full Story
By: Chris Powell, Secretary/Treasurer, GATA - 26 August, 2014
Your secretary/treasurer will speak at the Mines and Money conference in London in December and will try to convey the essence of the Western central bank gold price suppression scheme to the many mining and investment company executives attending without putting them in a position where they might have to acknowledge having listened. Full Story
The upcoming bottom of the 60-year cycle will drastically alter the U.S. economic landscape. The ending of the long-term disinflationary/deflationary undercurrent will soon give way to a new long-term cycle of re-inflation/inflation, bringing with it both challenges and opportunities. As we begin a new 60-year cycle, the main challenge for the Federal Reserve will be to resist the temptation to stimulate the economy during periods of sub-par growth. The saying, “Old generals fight the old wars” applies here as the Fed has always had difficulty in discerning the dominant economic undercurrent. Full Story
Those who root for gold root for India. Despite a welcome June rally, it’s been a rocky second quarter for the world’s second-largest consumer of the metal, with demand down 18 percent compared to last year. But consumer appetite seems to be on the upswing following a tepid July. Gold premiums rose to between $10 and $13 a troy ounce this month, compared to zero last month. Such premiums are good indicators that buyers are willing to spend more on gold jewelry and other forms of bullion. Full Story
Out with the old, and in with the new. The new era is not a chug-a-lug contest for “parabola demanders”. Nor is it a QE reunion party. This is a new era of consistently growing demand for gold jewellery, created from gold that is mined. Soon this key source of demand will surpass mine and scrap supply. The man who I’ve dubbed the world gold community’s man of the year, seems to be hinting it could happen right now! Full Story
I was 18 years old when I left boot camp for Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, where the Marine Corps stationed 65,000 troops. When my unit got our first weekend pass and could actually leave the base in civilian clothes, something I hadn’t worn in several months, I put on a brand new pair of Levis, no belt, penny loafers, white socks, and a collared, buttoned shirt. I had no hair to comb—the Marine Corps saw to that. Full Story
By: Steve Saville, The Speculative Investor - 26 August, 2014
In February of 2009 we wrote that if the story unfolded as we expected then a lot of future economic commentary would begin with the word "despite", but that in most cases the commentary would be a lot closer to the truth if "despite" were replaced with "because of". Our 2009 assessment remains applicable in that most commentators still don't get it and still say "despite" when they should be saying "because of". Full Story
Have you ever wondered what the world will look like when China decides to no longer use the dollar? I could have said "Russia and China" but Russia has already been forced away from the dollar in one of the worst policy moves ever enacted by the U.S.. Rather than "punishing" Russia by kicking them out of the SWIFT system, the U.S. would have been better served if they tried to lock them within it, so it goes. Full Story
In Why they are making an enemy of Russia? we looked at two of the key reasons why the US is making an enemy of Russia, namely the promotion of conflict by the powerful Defense industry lobby in order to keep its order books full, and the value of conjuring up an external enemy as a hate figure for the masses, in order to take the heat off the government. In this article we are going to look at what is arguably an even bigger reason, that was largely omitted in the earlier article, which is that Russia, in alliance with China, is threatening to bring an end to the dollar as the global reserve currency, which would mean the end of the American empire. Full Story
One of the great pleasures of writing this letter is the fascinating correspondence and the relationships that develop along the way. The internet has allowed me to meet a wide range of people all over the world – something that never happened to me pre-1999. Not only do I get to meet a wide variety of people, I also come into contact with an even wider range of knowledge and ideas, much of which comes my way from readers who send me work they think I’ll have an interest in. I have a bountiful, never-ending source of thoughtful material, thanks to you. Full Story
By now I must have written scores of columns on gold and silver price suppression. Many of these columns have posited on events that might change these anti-free market tactics. What I haven’t written about, however, is the group that is most adversely affected by the price suppression and, arguably, could do the most to change the status quo. Full Story
Michael Fowler, senior mining analyst with Toronto-based Loewen, Ondaatje & McCutcheon, predicts when gold breaks out, mining M&A will take off. He expects the major producers to lead the next rush of M&A. In this interview with The Gold Report. Fowler discusses why the majors are hungry for development-stage companies with high-grade, near-term production assets. Full Story
In the first part of this three-part series, I discussed the importance of cycles such as four-year presidential elections and the life of a gold mine, and how they play into our investment strategy here at U.S. Global Investors. Part II dealt with statistical diagnostic tools, in which I strived to simplify the definitions of standard deviation and mean reversion and explain how they’re applied. The third part of this series on managing expectations is devoted to fundamental resource stock evaluation. I’ll discuss some of the statistical tools we use to pick quality stocks during a treacherous bear market, such as what we’ve seen in gold stocks the last three years. Full Story
The hypocrisy is endless. Counter-intuition is the norm. Observing financial markets requires a mirror image interpretation in an economic fun house. Take Warren Buffet, for example. The darling of modern finance in a ten thousand dollar crumpled suit, he exemplifies every traders dream of beating the markets - buying low, selling high, and at the same time all that is frugal. Full Story
The advent of computer generated trading algorithms heralded a quantum leap forward in the quest for 24/7 control of markets. No longer were humans beings required to do such unseemly things as man trading desks or worry a whit if free markets were, if even infrequently, attempting to function. Algo precision has made even the blackest of black swan events seem to turn lily white in their utter non-eventfulness. No more significant Dow or bond crashes, and best of all, no gold rallies exceeding (exactly) 1.00%, or the occasional 2.00%. Full Story
Miners bull and bear markets structures can be clearly identified with the Elliott Wave Principle and look ready soon to enter a new impulsive move up. Keeping an eye on the Elliott Wave structure is important as this tool is mostly used by institutionals and hedge fund managers. Full Story
The Fed likes to claim that its policies are aimed at helping Main Street. Ben Bernanke began this argument when he was still Fed Chairman. Janet Yellen has since taken it a step further claiming that she comes from an “intellectual tradition” that it is important to use “public policy” to “make the world a better place.” Full Story
While out for my morning ride I was thinking of topics to write about and the thought popped into my head "what could possibly go wrong?". Actually, I then thought to myself "with everything as they are, what could possibly go right?". I normally out of habit because the way I am wired put "odds" on almost everything. The odds in my opinion for the current system to go forward for any length of time and "right itself" are zero. Not "almost zero", ZERO! I will get into the "zero" part in bit, I first want to point out where we are since it's hard to keep track with the age of information overload we live in. Full Story
Who would have believed when the Great Financial Crisis was winding down five years ago that the feather merchants, unrepentant as always and eager to make up for lost time, would be right back at it, erecting an even bigger, shakier house of cards? A recent Wall Street Journal headline offers a hint of their success so far: “With Rates Low, Firms Near Borrowing Record.” Fresh evidence that epic malinvestment is more robust than ever would be scary enough by itself. Full Story
Cold War 2.0 is the most likely outcome of the Ukraine / Russia showdown - the ideal diversion to redirect attention away from the imploding global economy. Expect inflation to climb sharply, sending gold higher, but this time, officials hands will be tied and unable to fight back with higher rates. Careless foreign policy decisions by the West have strengthened ties between the BRIC nations, which are positioning themselves against the dollar. The Greenback is losing reserve currency status at an alarming pace. A new global conflict could stem from unrest in Ukraine. Full Story
If one looks at a longer term chart of the last two years it’s very clear that gold is being capped at certain levels, and those levels are slowly forcing gold lower and lower. Each one of these manipulation zones are being defended successfully and that has some serious connotations going forward. Full Story
When we first wrote about this, we actually caused a bit of a stir but the primary vote on The Swiss Gold Initiative was still over six months away. Now, with the date of the vote rapidly approaching, it is time to begin reviving this issue. Interest is beginning to build, awareness is growing and the date of the national referendum has been set. Later this year, on November 30, the good people of Switzerland will finally get an opportunity to make their voices heard. Full Story
A five-year regime of artificially low US interest rates is responsible for a bubble in stocks, bonds, real estate, emerging markets and many other asset classes. But can it really be said to have boosted gold prices? Certainly not over the past three years. Gold peaked in October 2011 and silver in April of that year. Precious metal prices today are not so far away from where they stood five years ago. Full Story
Elsewhere we mentioned that if a squeeze got underway it likely would not be because of the overly large short positions held by Swap Dealers in silver futures. No, if a squeeze develops, it is more likely to be caused by the Swap Dealer positioning in gold futures. Consider the data table below as “Exhibit A”. Full Story
What shook the markets and economies this week? How does it affect gold, silver and platinum prices? Join us for our weekly wrap up with Eric Sprott to get his insights on how recent events in the market affect you! Full Story
"ISIS poses a greater threat than 9/11. This is way beyond anything we have ever seen. We must prepare for everything. Get ready!" US Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel. Whoa, Chuckie...back off a bit, here. Just who do you think it was that helped create the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, aka ISIS, fund them, train them, and provide the best weapons for them? Can you spell U S, as in a part of your title description as Secretary of Defense? Are you really telling America, and the world, that you are actually that clueless? Full Story
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