The uninvited guest: Chinese sub pops up in middle of U.S. Navy exercise, leaving military chiefs red-faced

By MATTHEW HICKLEY, Daily Mail:

American military chiefs have been left dumbstruck by an undetected Chinese submarine popping up at the heart of a recent Pacific exercise and close to the vast U.S.S. Kitty Hawk - a 1,000ft supercarrier with 4,500 personnel on board.

By the time it surfaced the 160ft Song Class diesel-electric attack submarine is understood to have sailed within viable range for launching torpedoes or missiles at the carrier........read in full

Currency Wars for Dummies

PDF available for download here

U.S. of "Irony and Hypocrisy": We're No. 1 ... At Currency Manipulation, Pento Says

From Yahoo Finance:

After the G20 failed to reach any consensus on currency issues and trade imbalances, President Obama took a direct shot at China Friday, saying the renminbi "is undervalued...and China spends enormous amounts of money intervening in the market to keep it undervalued.".....read and watch top video here

Barack Obama closes G20 with pop at China over trade

From the UK Telegraph:

The summit in South Korea ended as it had begun, dominated by the row over gaps and surpluses which sees China accused of keeping the yuan artificially low to boost its exports at the expense of US jobs.

"It (the yuan) is undervalued and China spends enormous amounts of money intervening in the market to keep it undervalued," Mr Obama said, adding that China must transition to a market-based system.

"No nation should assume that their path to prosperity is paved simply with exports to the US," he added.

However Beijing is, in turn, furious that the US recently decided to pump an extra $600bn (£370bn) into the US economy through quantitative easing, viewing it as a move to weaken the dollar. International support for Mr Obama's attempts to get tough on China was muted......read on

Did a Chinese nuclear sub fire a missile off the Californian coast?

From dprogram.net:

China flexed its military muscle Monday evening in the skies west of Los Angeles when a Chinese Navy Jin class ballistic missile nuclear submarine, deployed secretly from its underground home base on the south coast of Hainan island, launched an intercontinental ballistic missile from international waters off the southern California coast. WMR’s intelligence sources in Asia, including Japan, say the belief by the military commands in Asia and the intelligence services is that the Chinese decided to demonstrate to the United States its capabilities on the eve of the G-20 Summit in Seoul and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Tokyo, where President Obama is scheduled to attend during his ten-day trip to Asia.

The reported Chinese missile test off Los Angeles came as a double blow to Obama. The day after the missile firing, China’s leading credit rating agency, Dagong Global Credit Rating, downgraded sovereign debt rating of the United States to A-plus from AA. The missile demonstration coupled with the downgrading of the United States financial grade represents a military and financial show of force by Beijing to Washington.....read on

Crash JPMorgan, Buy Silver

Max Keiser hacks at the roots instead of the branches of the silver manipulation story.

Jim Rickards - The Coming Dollar Collapse

Jim Rickards is interview by Eric King of King World News about war games based on the collapse of the dollar and the world bank head calling for gold to be considered as a reference point for currencies......listen here

Peter Shiff - Creating Inflation

Weekend Chill Out - Let's get Physical

Considering all the talk in the last 2 weeks about JP Morgan and HSBC being accused of firing regular bursts of paper bullets at the silver market it seems the time has come to shred the paper and get into physical.

What A Tangled Web We Weave

By Aubie Baltin CFA, CTA, CFP, PhD.

"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered… -- Thomas Jefferson, 1802

If policy makers are not careful, present dynamics may precipitate a worldwide Trade War culminating in a worldwide DEPRESSION, brought about by protectionist pressures exacerbated by Global, political "Beggar Thy Neighbor" motivations. (it's happened before: There is no end to the stupidity of politicians)

Past evidence of cycles suggests that we are about a third of way through what might be a 16 to 20 year DEPRESSION. However, "debt deflations", such as the one that we are in, will be much worse than typical cycles, which are also Government induced but brought on by the FED increasing interest rates and tightening credit (a la Paul Volcker in 1980). One key indicator that can be used to illustrate this idea is the ratio of the level of the S&P 500 Index to the price of an ounce of Gold, which hit a high of 5.5x towards the end of the Tech Bubble in 2001. The ratio has since collapsed to below 1x. While this is not the lowest it has been, it is an indication that confidence in owning paper assets has evaporated (that is probably what the ever shrinking volume is telling us) and the classic hard asset of Gold has won out as the only reliable STORE and preservation of Wealth, which is now fast becoming investors main concern. Similar collapses in the ratio were seen after the 1929 crash and the 1973 oil crisis.

A fiat currency is only as strong as the belief it inspires to its holders.......read on