By: Bill Bonner & The Daily Reckoning Crew - 12 December, 2008
-Washington to Detroit: Drop dead!…the mainstream media has picked up the message - the downturn is bad and going to get worse… -Mr. Market likes to surprise us…what if Treasuries turned out to be the most dangerous investments you could make? -Detroit is a dinosaur, but so is the whole system - our answer to a dear reader…selling Senate seats…and more! Full Story
By: Peter Schiff, Euro Pacific Capital, Inc. - 12 December, 2008
In the end, rather than filling our stockings with Christmas goodies, our foreign creditors will likely substitute lumps of coal. Of course given how high coal prices will ultimately rise as a result of all this inflation, in Christmas Future perhaps our stockings will be stuffed with nothing but our own worthless currency. It might not burn as well as coal, but at least we will have plenty of it. Full Story
By: Julian D. W. Phillips, Gold/Silver Forecaster - Global Watch - 12 December, 2008
The $ has started to tumble and the gold price has positively turned. Meanwhile investors are not staring into the abyss quite as much. With interest rates tumbling across the globe, the world’s central bankers are acting in concert, clearly in hopes that foreign exchange rates will steady. At the same time, the global economy and the nations that make it up are all stimulating their economies. Full Story
By: Olivier Garret, CEO, Casey Research - 12 December, 2008
Within the last year, the true extent of the real estate debacle and ensuing credit crisis in the United States has become blatantly obvious. But now there is a new phenomenon rearing its ugly head: a credit crisis of the individual that is hitting a large number of Americans straight in the pocketbook. The reason: credit providers have started to batten down the hatches. Full Story
By: Adam Hamilton, Zeal Intelligence LLC - 12 December, 2008
If it is not already happening, someday soon some entrepreneur will start selling t-shirts proclaiming “I Survived the Great Stock Panic of 2008”. The last few months’ market action has been so unprecedented, and so brutally unforgiving to trade, that emerging from it ready to keep trading is an impressive feat. Many traders have lost everything because of their leverage while many more have totally given up on trading. Full Story
By: Dr. Ron Paul, U.S. Congressman - 12 December, 2008
I rise in opposition to the rule and the underlying legislation. It doesn't take a whole lot to convince me that we are on the wrong track with this type of legislation. And at great risk of being marginalized, I want to bring up a couple of issues. One is that if one were to look for guidance in the Constitution, there's no evidence that we have the authority to take funds from one group of Americans and transfer it to another group who happen to need something. Full Story
The Hard Realities about the markets these days are that markets are at least as likely to decline dramatically as they are to increase, and perhaps more so in the future. So if you want to protect and enhance your Retirement Assets and make money in the markets you need to act on the following Guidelines: Full Story
The TROUBLE with GOLD...? If you choose to use it as money, then you can only abandon it once. Once done, it's done forever. You can't keep floating the value of cash time and again. Full Story
The existing price of gold reflects the market’s current consensus expectations about the strength of the loans that the Fed has made. The gold price will move up and down on any news about the quality of these loans and on any news that the Fed is making new loans. It will be evaluating the quality of any new loans. These considerations are by no means the only events that affect the price of gold against the dollar, but they are important ones as the reaction to the AIG bailout shows. Full Story
By: Jason Hommel, Silver Stock Report - 12 December, 2008
In my last article, What if They Returned to the Gold Standard? December 10, 2008 I noted that gold should go to $40,750/oz. if the $10.5 trillion of U.S. Bonds were to be backed by gold. For those who noticed, that was an understatement. Full Story
By: David Morgan, Silver Investor - 12 December, 2008
As the debt burden continues to increase, more and more people will see the light and realize that it is not the government responsible for paying off the bonds—it’s the people themselves. And where is that “money” coming from? Full Story
The Federal Reserve's latest Flow of Funds Report contains some painful news about how our asset-dependent economy is faring in what is now an increasingly asset-averse world. This time around we have double the trouble as prices for both stocks and housing are declining. Full Story
The United States used to be the largest creditor nation. Now we are the largest debtor nation. One bread winner used to earn enough to support the entire family. This is no longer the case for most American households. It now takes two. Why? Full Story
By: Richard Daughty, The MOGAMBO GURU - 12 December, 2008
'It is always about the money!' for me, and you are hoping that I will use my dictatorial powers to get your money back for you, again proving that 'It is always about the money!' with you, too! Hahaha! Full Story
By: Rick Ackerman, Rick's Picks - 12 December, 2008
A while back, when Microsoft shares were trading in the mid-$20s, we used charts to predict they would eventually fall to $4 or lower. How could such a thing happen to a company with a product that dominates the software world, and with cash reserves totaling more than $20 billion? For starters, consider that Microsoft used to have twice that sum on hand but squandered a big chunk of it on investments that would make the guys at Bear Stearns look like visionaries. Full Story
By: Bill Bonner & The Daily Reckoning Crew - 11 December, 2008
-The markets are looking over the worst spending slump in 60 years…that planet's first Worldwide Bailout… -And look at that - we're back to the 'deficits don't matter' stance…the more the Fed tries to fix the problem, the worse it gets… -Savers are losing a couple of percent per year to inflation…investors are losing money in every asset class…and more! Full Story
By: John Browne, Senior Market Strategist, Euro Pacific Capital - 11 December, 2008
Today, Congress signaled its intention to use $15 billion in public money to bail out the "Big Three" automakers with a so-called "bridging" loan. You would think that after becoming a major issue during the presidential campaign, politicians would have become wary of "bridges to nowhere." Full Story
Currently, the “sweet spot” when it comes to capital raised on the London AIM for clients is between $35 and $150 million. Hot flavors of the month are hydro-carbon, health / medical services, alternative energy projects, mining projects, real estate, technology projects and media / entertainment projects. Full Story
Major mining companies’ takeover party of the last few years is starting to yield a globalized hangover of epic scope. Many of the world’s top producers of primary materials have found that the belle of the ball they danced with and wed in better times has turned into a debt anchor chained to their balance sheets. Full Story
Readers of the new official Warren Buffett biography ‘The Snowball’ will be taken aback by the review of his presentation to the Sun Valley meeting of the US super-rich in 1999. Then he suggested that the Dow might go nowhere for 17 years, following a pattern seen in many previous epochs, most recently 1964-1981. Full Story
By: Jason Hommel, Silver Stock Report - 11 December, 2008
In theory, if the U.S. government had the restraint to stop issuing any kind of new debt, and if there was a runaway hyperinflation, the government could credibly stop any sort of runaway gold price by offering gold at a price of $40,750/oz. Full Story
By: Andrew Mickey, Q1 Publishing - 11 December, 2008
Risk has quickly regained its status as a four-letter word. No one wants to hear about it and no one wants to think about it. But those willing to take it on (pragmatically, mind you) will likely earn greater rewards than they would have at any other point in the past twenty years. Full Story
By: Richard Daughty, The Mogambo Guru - 11 December, 2008
Yeah! Emperor! That's it! Taking over the world where I could dispatch armies of bad-tempered underlings to fetch Alan Greenspan and ferret out all the people who aided and abetted him all those years, like this Bernanke creep, and bring them all to me! Full Story
By: Rick Ackerman, Rick's Picks - 11 December, 2008
February Gold faltered near a crucial resistance yesterday, but initial signs suggest a bullish outcome. If so, the futures could soon be trading as high as $876, up nearly $70 over yesterday’s settlement price. The immediate impediment lies at 808.70, a Hidden Pivot that we projected as a minimum rally target a few days ago, when gold was trading around $764. Full Story
By: Bill Bonner & The Daily Reckoning Crew - 10 December, 2008
-Still getting used to the time difference in Australia…by request: a short and sweet version of The Daily Reckoning… -Stocks are down…bankruptcies are up…the rally isn't over…buy gold… -Poor Sam Zell!…$5 billion in losses for the airline industry…a deal for the automakers…and more! Full Story
By: Bob Chapman, The International Forecaster - 10 December, 2008
We are now 17 months into a credit crisis that continues to expose the corruption and incompetence of government, banking, Wall Street and transnational corporations. The situation has not stabilized and it won’t anytime soon. All we see are sweetheart deals for elitist corporations for which American taxpayers will pay for years to come. The future of our nation is totally out of control. For the last eight years our economy has been running on something for nothing, lies and deceit. The result will be hyperinflation and then the Second Great Depression. Full Story
Here is an update on the backwardation in gold that started on December 2 at an annualized discount rate of 1.98% and 0.14% to spot in the December and February contracts. It continued and worsened on December 8, 9, and 10 as shown by the corresponding rates widening to 3.5% and 0.65%. It is nothing short of awesome. This is a premonition of a coming gold fever of unprecedented dimensions that will overwhelm the world as soon as its significance is fully digested by the doubting Thomases. Full Story
By: Olivier Garret, CEO, Casey Research - 10 December, 2008
It took the statisticians of the National Bureau of Economic Research almost a year to confirm what the rest of us already knew, that the US registered a significant decline in economic activity, thus officially entering a period of recession. While I am pleased that the members of NBER take their duties seriously, thereby ensuring that they don’t leap to any hasty conclusions, I only wish that similar moderation could be displayed by their colleagues at the Fed and the Treasury. Full Story
Our lives consist of and are controlled by cycles. From the 1 second heartbeat cycle, to the 1,000 year millennium cycle and many other cycles in between, we live and die within cycles. The ‘three score and ten’ human cycle is simply a part of it all. Full Story
WITH THE BANK OF ENGLAND hitting the panic button, slashing the returns-paid-to-UK-savers down to three-century lows at the start of December, the clear winners from its campaign to reboot the bubble so far have been gold investors stuck with Pounds to earn and Pounds to spend. Full Story
I’m still shaking my head trying to make sense of this. The source of all money in the United States, the printing press itself, is going to issue debt? Does that mean then, that the money it prints to represent the sales of U.S. Treasuries, which is technically not a debt, but a debit, will differ from the money it will distribute representative of (I assume) bonds it will issue of its own? Full Story
By: Gary North, Mises on Money - 10 December, 2008
The world we grew up in has been lost since August 2007. The man who saw this coming and warned about it, Dr. Kurt Richebächer, died that month. He had predicted the worst capital crisis in our era. This is what it is becoming. Investors are Keynesians. They believe that policies like these got America out of the Great Depression. They didn't. Full Story
By: Jason Hommel, Silver Stock Report - 10 December, 2008
This failure of major banks to deliver silver should be big news, but it is sorely neglected by all major media, who don't care one tiny bit about honesty and truth, and silver is even less of a concern to them. Full Story
Huge international banking firms normally do not take metal deliveries from futures markets. They normally buy on the London spot market. The fact that they are demanding delivery from COMEX means one of two things. Either the London bullion exchanges have run out of gold, or these firms are finding it cheaper to buy gold as a ‘future’ than as a spot exchange. Full Story
By: Richard Daughty, The MOGAMBO GURU - 10 December, 2008
Screw the 'official' inflation rate! But let's not dwell on an inflation rate of 20 percent, which means that prices will double in about three and a half years, because that kind of inflationary mayhem is the stuff of which revolutions, economic ruination and Embarrassing Mogambo Episodes (EME) are made! Yikes! Full Story
By: Rick Ackerman, Rick's Picks - 10 December, 2008
Stocks turned weak yesterday, but it looks like a buying opportunity rather than the beginning of a new trend. Notice in the chart below how the rally begun off Friday’s low has surpassed two prior peaks. That meets our minimum requirement for creating a bullish impulse leg – one of daily-chart degree in this instance -- and it is what makes us very confident that yet another rally leg awaits once the consolidation beneath Monday’s high is complete. Full Story
By: Bill Bonner & The Daily Reckoning Crew - 9 December, 2008
-U.S. investors shrug off the jobs data…how long will the bounce continue? -1 in 10 homeowners are in trouble…the feds are trying to avoid deflation - cue the printing presses… -The simple way of reliquifying the economy…the world tour continues…and more! Full Story
The downturn is following a path so predictable, day by day, that people who comprehend the business cycle don’t even need to read the news. You can intuit what will happen next because it’s happening like a textbook case – even as it is reported with a continued sense of surprise. Full Story
Virtually all investors large or small, institutional or private, sophisticated or clueless have managed to weather the current tsunami in the financial markets. If they are honest, however, most would admit to having taken at least a haircut and a shave, if not a bath, from late September 2008 to the present. Full Story
The truth behind the real management of the economy needs to be told. Corruption at the top spreads downward, and the increasing violence in schools is proportionally related to the rise of duplicitous leadership throughout our society. Our children will reap the consequences of our inaction if nothing is done. Full Story
Uncle Buck looks sickly from these panic fueled levels. The debt note that was the dirty little secret (along with pal Johnny Yen) of an entire global financial apparatus pretending that the 2003-2007 bull market was real (and pretending to know what it was doing with other peoples' money) is now showing exhaustion. Full Story
By: Steven Saville, Speculative Investor - 9 December, 2008
The problem is not now, and never will be, a shortage of money. One of today's problems in the US, Australia, and several other Western nations is a shortage of savings, and not only will increasing the money supply not help the situation it will very likely make the situation worse because it will lead to a further reduction in real savings. Full Story
The past year was a challenging one fraught with peril in the face of frozen credit and cyclical cross-currents. Yet for every crisis there is a corresponding opportunity. This year’s crisis has brought equity values to opportunity levels as we enter what promises to be a kinder market environment, thanks in part to the Kress cycle configuration going forward. The fact that the Fed has finally (if belatedly) reversed its tight money stance is also a key factor in the months ahead. Full Story
Monday the NASDAQ 100, SP500 and Dow all gapped higher with average volume above the recent consolidation levels. This appears to be the same setup we had on November 4th which was an exhaustion gap followed buy heavy selling down to new multi year lows. The chart below is of the SP500 ETF but the QQQQ and DIA all show the same price action. I’m not saying we are headed lower but caution must be taken here in case this plays like it did a month ago. Full Story
The market can be frustrating. Just a few weeks ago it looked like the markets were about to reach lows we haven’t seen since the early 90’s. The commodity bubble was bursting, hedge funds were imploding, and it seemed like the selling would never stop. To add fuel to the fire, unemployment was getting worse, consumers started saving again (seemingly all at the same time, which isn’t very helpful), and practically every week another bank failed. Full Story
By: Richard Daughty, The MOGAMBO GURU - 9 December, 2008
But yet this huge reduction of $85 billion in a week is, somehow, a non-event, even when considering that the Fed has doubled the stock of fabled High Powered Money to over $2 trillion in just the last couple of months! Beyond astonishing! Full Story
By: Rick Ackerman, Rick's Picks - 9 December, 2008
Should investors hail President-elect Obama’s plan to create 2.5 million jobs as good news? Frankly, no. It is probably the worst news to hit Wall Street since 1935, when FDR created the Works Progress Administration with the stroke of a pen. Obama apparently intends to bring back Keynesian quackery full-bore, and with it a robust echo of Santayana’s warning: Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Full Story
By: Theodore Butler and James Cook - 8 December, 2008
Here’s a quick follow-up to last week’s comment about the CFTC sending out form letters to me and many of you asking for specific evidence about a manipulation in silver prices. A number of you asked me how to respond. Before you respond, it is important to understand what the Commission is trying to accomplish with their notifications. They are not looking for specific evidence. They are looking to buy time. They are stalling. Full Story
There is a great deal of truth to what Professor Fekete is saying. The widening of the “vig” being paid to bullion banks is an act of necessity [if you’re a Central Banker dead set on saving a failing fiat regime] and DESPERATION!!! Full Story
By: Bill Bonner & The Daily Reckoning Crew - 8 December, 2008
-Despite the rally, the U.S. economy is still in free-fall - and the worst is yet to come… -Stocks could rise above 10,000 on the Dow, and you know what to do if that happens: sell!…Gloom and doom is the fashion… -The decline of the great empires…Jethro Tull Mumbai-style…and more! Full Story
Here is an update on the backwardation in gold that started on December 2. It continued and worsened on December 3, 4, and 5. So far this is the most serious signal of the economic crisis: the world is rushing headlong into a Great Depression, possibly worse than that of the 1930’s. Full Story
Fresh evidence today of continuing U.S. monetary perfidy as Obama announces plans to build a better nest while continuing to hack at the tree in which it resides. How else to parody the incredibly mindless strategy of plunging the nation more severely into debt on what is arguably the brink of its own foreclosure? Full Story
Perhaps the greatest gift we all could receive in the coming season of year end holidays would be the final demise of the hedge fund industry. While that might not happen, we might have to settle for the end of the U.S. dollar’s false rally. Before going into that though, one question. If these funds are hedged, how come they have been losing so much money? Full Story
No one could have imagined a little over 4 months ago with crude oil trading at $147, that crude oil would have crashed by 70% and be threatening to break below $40 so soon. Therefore this analysis seeks to to evaluate the prospects for crude oils future trend over the next 12 months in determining whether crude oil today is a good buy or not. Full Story
As promised Friday, here we are with a look at the Amex Gold Bugs Index (HUI) in an effort to gauge the likely strength of the anticipated impulse into the first quarter of next year. And as you will see below this move could get quite impulsive if Bollinger Band (BB) widths begin to expand during the move. Full Story
Watching investors fleeing into the perceived safety of US Treasuries is akin to watching people board the Titanic in the movie - you know that they are doomed. This is because the United States is totally bankrupt - more than bankrupt in fact, since its debts are physically impossible to repay in any circumstances and what we are witnessing now is the cowards way out - the creation of money in whatever quantity is necessary to prevent total gridlock. Full Story
I said going into Thanksgiving week the stock market was at oversold levels normally seen at or near a bottom. In fact, I was looking to get back in if there was a washout the Friday before turkey day. I noted both the week of Thanksgiving and the month of December is a highly favorable seasonal time for the market. However, with the economy getting bleaker by the day, I remained on the sidelines. Full Story
Bernanke and Company, who are running the U.S. central bank, the Federal Reserve (Fed), have been very busy in the past year or so. The size of the bank has more than doubled since August of 2007. Their assets, mainly loans and credits they extend, have exploded from $902.4 billion to $2.17 trillion as of December 3, 2008. Full Story
This was an exciting week as the gold stocks – to superficial observers – appeared to be hit hard on Thursday and Friday morning. But gold stocks are up substantially from their Oct. 24 low, and one of my favorites finished the week up 100% from that point. And more substantial market students saw that a great deal of good, solid technical work had been done paving the way for a long advance. Full Story
If the Fed continues, as declared, to support interest rates at artificially low levels by the way of debt monetization, a major down-leg in the US dollar is inevitable. What’s most difficult is to predict is timing. We believe that this process will occur in full swing in the first part of the next year. Full Story
Systemic crises are caused by the inability of systems to respond to stress. When systems can no longer adequately respond, systemic collapse ensues. We are currently witness to the end of a system of paper money based on credit and debt, a system now in the final stages of collapse. Full Story
For the Chinese the global financial crisis is fast morphing into a depression with factory orders falling faster than the US in the Great Depression and train stations crowded with former workers heading home for a life with their relatives. Full Story
By: David Chapman, Union Securities - 8 December, 2008
The first few days of a month tend to be greeted by a somewhat positive market. The record since 1953 is that the first day of the month is an up day roughly 56 per cent of the time, though Mondays tend to be mixed, with gains only about 47 per cent of the time. And in bear markets Mondays are up only about 40 per cent of the time. The first day of December also tends to bring us an up day in the market. Full Story
By: David Bond, Editor The Silver Valley Mining Journal - 8 December, 2008
This is not a Vancouver thing, or a Toronto thing, or a Denver or a San Francisco thing. America's crumbling Empire is not Canada's fault, or China's fault. It is entirely our own doing. As Walt Kelly's Pogo said long ago, "We have met the enemy and he is us." The planet still needs miners, and right now, miners need faith. Full Story
By: Rick Ackerman, Rick's Picks - 8 December, 2008
Is the dollar about to break? The question is crucial for gold bugs, since the greenback’s strength has kept a lid on bullion prices since last March, when the dollar embarked on a 25% rally from historical lows. Over the same period, gold has dropped about 28% after hitting an all-time high near $1048. Full Story
1st Hour: Headline news & Market Weatherman Forecast. Spotlight Stock Picks with big dividends. The International Forecaster and Host Chris Waltzek answer listeners' questions. -2nd Hour Nouriel Roubini Full Story
By: Bob Chapman, The International Forecaster - 7 December, 2008
We have watched over and over again since 10/19/87 our government dump gold on the market to suppress prices. From 10/19/87 until 8/20/88 that was an illegal enterprise. As we moved into the early 1990s, we saw commercials on the Comex shorting and increasing shorts as prices rose, which is not a normal procedure. It exposes one to the possibility of major losses, unless your shorting is covered by the US government. Full Story
By: John Mauldin, Millennium Wave Advisors - 7 December, 2008
Some of the more important questions of the moment are whether we face a serious bout of deflation, and if so, what can be done about it. There are market observers who are looking at the graphs which show the meteoric rise in the monetary base (see below) and predict that we will soon see much higher and rising inflation and a seriously falling dollar (accompanied with a large rise in gold). Is inflation everywhere and always a monetary phenomenon, as Friedman taught us? Full Story
Some would make an argument that gold is priceless in terms of paper money these days based on the fact that gold went to backwardation for the first time ever in history in early December. Meaning: gold owners were forfeiting risk free profits by not selling at a higher price December delivery gold and buying lower priced February delivery gold. The logic being that should gold in fact go into permanent backwardation it would no longer be for sale at any price. Period. Full Story
By: Richard Daughty, The Mogambo Guru - 7 December, 2008
Hell, everybody with any brains knows that if the government keeps creating more and more money and credit, then consumer prices will rise exponentially and the economy will be ruined, just like Zimbabwe today… Full Story
Only one bank failure this week after global central banks around the world slashed interest rates in an attempt to make loans more attractive. Before you know it the many stories of a zero interest rate world will be true. Just as gold and silver pay no interest, neither will currency. Gold and silver will shine and rise in price, it is coming I guarantee it. Full Story
The U.S. economy weakened across all regions according to the Fed’s beige book. Credit demand has fallen and what loans are available are tougher to get. Housing is still falling and commercial real estate is weakening. Full Story
The content on this site is protected
by U.S. and international copyright laws and is the property of GoldSeek.com
and/or the providers of the content under license. By "content" we mean any
information, mode of expression, or other materials and services found on GoldSeek.com.
This includes editorials, news, our writings, graphics, and any and all other
features found on the site. Please contact
us for any further information.
Disclaimer
The views contained here may not represent the views of GoldSeek.com, its affiliates or advertisers. GoldSeek.com makes no representation, warranty or guarantee as to the accuracy
or completeness of the information (including news, editorials, prices, statistics,
analyses and the like) provided through its service. Any copying, reproduction
and/or redistribution of any of the documents, data, content or materials contained
on or within this website, without the express written consent of GoldSeek.com,
is strictly prohibited. In no event shall GoldSeek.com or its affiliates be
liable to any person for any decision made or action taken in reliance upon
the information provided herein.
OilSeek.com
