To Be or Not to Be?

Latest essay from Martin Armstrong, Martin discusses the many flavours of default throughout history.....read here

The "Flight to Safety" Trade Your Broker Won't Tell You About

By Graham Summers: Quietly and with little fanfare, Gold has made a MAJOR change in its status. The precious metal is largely viewed as THE anti-paper money play by investors. Given that the world's central banks (with perhaps the exception of China) have maintained only one response to every issues that arises in the markets (print or spend money) Gold should be soaring.

Indeed, EVERY single new bailout or stimulus or monetization should push Gold higher. In fact, we should be seeing a kind of gradual awakening for investors as they realize that each one of these bailouts brings us closer to the "end game" in which throwing money at the world's financial problems has failed......read on

How Much Gold Remains In Fort Knox?

By Chris Weber: Yesterday marked the 39th anniversary of the day when the US Government declared bankruptcy. Oh, they didn't call it that at the time. But what happened on August 15, 1971 was that the US defaulted on its promise to pay gold for dollars.

Before that day, gold was the legal linchpin of the world monetary system. Although every currency was defined in terms of the US dollar, the dollar itself was legally defined as 1/35th of a troy ounce of gold.

Since then, there really has been no center to the international monetary system. The "reserve currency" continues to be the US dollar. But there is no official definition of what a dollar is. Like every other currency, its value changes every ten seconds as it is traded on the global currency markets. It is a promise to pay nothing. Its value has been devalued for years. On top of that, enormous effort has since been put into the global currency markets: buying, selling, manipulating...none of which has caused anything productive to the world economy. Oh, sure, currency investing has made some of us rich, but is it really the same kind of wealth that, say, Steve Jobs has created with Apple?......read on

Lies, Manipulation And Deception

By Ian Gordan: Every official economic government statistic has been presented in the best possible light, in order to convince the public that things are better than they actually are. I am convinced that the officials who run the US government, at least from a financial and economic perspective, Larry Summers, Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner et al, are presenting dishonest data in an effort to revive the US economy, which is at least 70% dependent upon the US consumer. These officials are trying to convince consumers that they will soon be able to resume the life that they were living, until 2007 brought them down with a dose of reality. That reality was debt doesn't make you rich; eventually, it leads you to the poorhouse, which is where many Americans are now, sadly, en route.....read in full

King Abdullah May Have Just Dodged Overthrow

From Business Insider: Did King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia narrowly avoid being overthrown by a close member of his own royal family? That seems to be a rumor circulating around some political and intelligence circles in Washington as well as in the Middle East. A Saudi official however denied the allegations saying it was most likely Iranian disinformation.

Indeed, there have been reports ¬- all unconfirmed -¬ that Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdel Aziz, a nephew of the king and former Saudi ambassador to Washington had attempted a coup and has since been under house arrest. Other sources said Bandar was detained in a Saudi prison. A Saudi official however told this reporter that the whole story was part of an Iranian disinformation campaign....read on

Gold demand is building but gold fever is nowhere near

By the Aden Sisters: Gold demand is building but gold fever is nowhere near

You will recognize itwhen it comes because there’sno fever like gold fever.

Well, maybe the tech fever in the late 1990s was close. Keep in mind though, the gold market is small compared to stocks and bonds, which means it could easily spike up once the fever hits.

The 1970s saw gold rise tenfold. Today gold has only risen about 400% in nine years. This good solid, steady and consistent growth provides a very bullish backdrop for a further rise in gold.

In fact, it’s been almost two years now since we’ve seen a decent downward correction in gold. The March to November 2008 decline, when gold lost almost 30%, was the last great buying opportunity.

Gold’s risen nearly 80% since that November low without more than a 14% decline. This super rise caused the bull market to move into a stronger phase last September when the gold price reached the first record high that was well above the $1000+ record highs of 2008-09....read in full

When 10 billion people jump

By Kevin Bloom: The Population Reference Bureau, a United States research and data analysis body, has just released its latest forecasts on population growth in the coming decades. Put it this way: it’s going to get squashy.

In his book When a Billion Chinese Jump, author Jonathan Watts explores the consequences of the People’s Republic foregoing the faraway promises of socialist bliss for the more immediate joys of capitalist consumption. The title derives from a nightmare he had as a child – if all the men, women and children in China jumped at the same time, the world would be knocked off its axis – and alludes to the impact the most populous nation on Earth has on the planet’s diminishing resources...read on

Is SA's gold mining industry turning into Zimbabwe-Lite?

By Tim Cohen: Here’s an interesting factoid: despite having about half the world’s known gold reserves, South Africa will produce less gold this year than it did in 1906, when horses were the predominant form of public transport. But amazingly, the extraordinary decline of South Africa’s gold mining industry is not the subject of public outcries, parliamentary enquiries or even particularly of public comment.

Yet every year, less and less gold gets produced by an industry ravaged by increasing costs, lower ore grades, a hostile mining ministry whose priority is overwhelmingly focused on transformation rather than production and a largely disinterested public....read on

Soros favoured gold in Q2, cut US equities

By Aaron Pressman (Reuters): Billionaire investor George Soros in the second quarter stuck with his big bet on gold but slashed his holdings in dozens of major U.S. companies from Verizon Communications to Pfizer.

Soros also may have sold his entire holdings in Petroleo Brasileiro SA (PETR4.SA) (PBR.N).

In a quarterly securities filing on Monday, Soros Fund Management reported owning substantially fewer U.S. listed stocks than three months earlier. The fund listed $5.1 billion of equities as of June 30, down 42 percent from $8.8 billion at the end of March.

After a terrible quarter for the stock market that saw the Standard & Poor's 500 Index plunge 12 percent, Soros may have been anticipating further turbulence ahead....read on

By Julian D.W. Phillips: At the moment, it appears that the gold price is being linked to the state of the global economic growth or lack thereof. Is it? Or are there other factors that contribute to the rise in the demand for gold? A look at the different types of demand gives us perspective on the real influences on the gold price...read on