Haven't we been here before?

By Graham Summers: One of the strangest aspects of history is that it not only repeats itself but that the repeats often come in rapid succession. Today, the entire financial world is repeating the 2008 debacle on a sovereign basis and few if any commentators seem to sense it.

Weird isn't it? The 2008 Autumn debacle happened less than two years ago. The policy response to it was to simply shift garbage debt from Wall Street to the Federal Reserve, suspend accounting standards, and pump the financial system with TRILLIONS of Dollars (NONE of which fundamentally addressed any of the problems causing the crisis) and yet grown adults with fancy titles and degrees actually believed that the issues were FIXED....read on

The Ethics Of Gold

By Ron Robins: The rising price of gold stands as the ethical barometer of the mismanagement of our fiscal, monetary, and currency systems. Gold is in the early stages of re-asserting its historic role of helping to bring order to monetary and currency chaos. Its price has risen more than fourfold over the past ten years as a result of investors anticipating the predictable financial and currency chaos we have today-and what is likely yet to come.

The central banks and government treasuries, particularly those of the US, Europe, and Japan, have been weakened and our trust in them eroded. For decades they assured us that only they and their paper currencies and fractional reserve banking systems can keep our economies growing forever. They are now failing for all to see. And before the ships of state sink and economies further submerge they bail out their banking friends.....read on

Silver prices now rising faster than gold

from ArabianMoney.net:

August is usually a quiet month in the precious metals market but this month is different. Silver has started behaving 100 per cent like a precious metal and not as an industrial commodity, and while stocks and Dr Copper have been falling, silver has been outperforming gold which is also on the up.

What is going on here? This is actually fully consistent with the bullion market rumors about the bank cartel unwinding its silver futures positions in the quietest month of the year.

You would expect gold to be falling a little with stocks under pressure. It is not. And you would expect silver to be selling off even more strongly because it is an industrial commodity as well as a precious metal. But it is not.

Does that mean that the gold price is being set up for a serious spike, and that silver will not only follow but outperform in these fireworks? Without the ability to look under the hood of the silver market – and the suspicion is that the market supply is nothing like what the market supposes – we are still in the dark.

But spot the price breakout. Silver is above $19 this morning. Gold is closing on $1,250. If this trend continues then $1,650 gold by next February could well be accompanied by $30 silver.

Silver Market up before options expiration

David Morgan discusses the recent rise in the silver price.....watch here

America no longer needs Chinese money, for now

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: As the Sino-American showdown in the South China and Yellow Seas escalates into the gravest superpower clash since the Cold War, the United States cannot wisely rely on China to help fund its budget deficit for any longer....read on

Ben Davies discusses the Silver Market

Ben Davies and Eric King discusses the recent rise in silver prices and factors that could positively affect the price going forward.....listen here

Have Faith In Gold And Not In Government Rhetoric

By David Levenstein: A little over a week ago, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner wrote an article for the New York Times entitled Welcome To The Recovery in which he touted the great strides that the U.S. economy was making. But, with unemployment still dangerously high, foreclosures and personal bankruptcies continuing to set all-time records, shrinking manufacturing, burgeoning national debt, massive budget deficits, I can't see any recovery at all. Don't get me wrong, I am not attacking Geithner as I would not like his job for all the gold in Fort Knox, if indeed there is any really left, but, I think all the economic rescue package did was to save a few financial institutions from becoming extinct. "Panicked by the collapse in demand and financing and fearing a prolonged slump, the private sector cut payrolls and investment savagely. The rate of job loss worsened with time: by early last year, 750,000 jobs vanished every month. The economic collapse drove tax revenue down, pushing the annual deficit up to $1.3 trillion by last January. The economic rescue package that President Obama put in place was essential to turning the economy around. The combined effect of government actions taken over the past two years - the stimulus package, the stress tests and recapitalization of the banks, the restructuring of the American car industry and the many steps taken by the Federal Reserve - were extremely effective in stopping the freefall and restarting the economy," Geithner stated in his article....read on

Silver Demand Picks up in India

by Shivom Seth: Festival season in India has picked up pace with Onam, a spring festival celebrated with much gusto and, given the high price of gold, people are buying silver to mark the ocassion.

Good rains have brought good tidings, especially for the silver market.

While demand for gold in India has picked up significantly over the last couple of days, it is the rising demand for silver that has tongues wagging.

Though India is generally believed to have a ravenous appetite for gold, it is also a major consumer of silver. Of the 4,000 tonnes that India used to import annually, around 2,600 tonnes was used to make jewelery and ornaments......read on

The Perils Of Unmitigated Positive Thinking

By Michael J. Kosares: Private citizen, Alan Greenspan, could afford to be blunt. "Our choices right now," he said in early August 2010, "are not between good and better; they're between bad and worse. The problem we now face is the most extraordinary financial crisis that I have ever seen or read about." These comments echo a growing sentiment that Americans are up against something far different from the average downturn. Thus far, according to the Pew Economic Policy Group, the financial crisis has cost the American people $3.4 trillion in lost real estate wealth; $7.4 trillion in lost stock wealth; and 5.5 million jobs. Pimco's Bill Gross calls this change in the national psyche the "new normal" -- an economic environment marked by reduced expectations, slow growth. falling incomes and low returns on investment.

The New York Times' Nelson Schwartz recently lamented: "The new normal challenges the optimism that's been at the root of American success for decades, if not centuries." In turn the new normal has spawned a quantum change in the way Americans view the economy, their future prospects, and how they should employ their capital. The real question facing Americans -- public policy makers and citizens/investors alike -- is not what constitutes a positive attitude, but what constitutes a healthy attitude, one capable of guiding investors through the next, and perhaps even more dangerous, chapter of the financial crisis.

When the financial crisis began to take its toll on the United Kingdom in 2008, Queen Elizabeth at a meeting with financial analysts asked the logical question: "Why didn't anyone see this coming?" Though directed at the London financial community, it could have just as easily been put to the mainstream media, academia, the politicians or the regulatory apparatus of the government. The answer she received would soon become standard fare: "No one saw this coming." The implication, of course, was that if no one saw it coming, then no one reasonably could be held accountable.

For countless private investors on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, Queen Elizabeth's question prompted a more personalized assessment: "Why," they asked their financial advisors, "wasn't I advised that this might be coming?" For those completely honest with themselves, the question reduced to "Why didn't I see this coming?" After all is said and done, each of us is responsible for the stewardship of our own portfolios, and to blame anyone else is pretty much an exercise in both futility and passing the buck.....read on

Bullion As An Alternative To Shorting (Part II)

By Jeff Nielson: In Part I, I discussed the world's largest and most obvious asset-bubble (excluding the derivatives market): the U.S. Treasuries market. While I pointed out that this market was an obvious target for "shorting", I also explained to readers why there were simply too many risks associated with shorting this opaque, and highly-manipulated market.

I explained that investing in bullion ("long") was a good "proxy" for shorting U.S. Treasuries, and concluded that this proxy was a safer, superior substitute for that short-position. In this instalment, I will apply that analysis to other U.S. asset-classes: the financial sector, and the U.S. dollar, itself.

When Wall Street's multi-trillion dollar Ponzi-schemes imploded (based upon the U.S. housing-bubble, which they also created), it was common knowledge that the entire U.S. financial sector was leveraged by an average of 30:1. It is a matter of simple arithmetic to observe that with such extreme leverage, it only takes a loss of a little over 3% on the underlying assets to take all "bets" at 30:1 leverage to zero.

Given that most of Wall Street's leverage was based upon the U.S. housing market, and given that the U.S. housing market plunged by roughly 30% (in its first collapse), you don't have to be a "mathematician" to figure out that this was ten times the decline necessary to take the entire, U.S. financial sector to zero....read on