Hugo Salinas Price

I thought seeing that I had only posted 1 essay by the famous Mexican billionaire Hugo Salinas Price that I would look over his past works to see if I could some other timeless pieces. I think I have in the following essays, actually the first essay ties in well with a previous post of mine (see here).

By Hugo Salinas Price:

Why encouraging the population of China to import gold makes sense

Conferences on: Gold & Silver as Monetary Assets

Also for those readers who can speak Spanish I found this more recent video of Hugo discussing his Silver Money Project:

What is George Soros up to in the gold market?

By Michael J. Kosares: The hubbub started when hedge fund guru George Soros proclaimed gold to be in a bubble, and it is still roiling nearly six months later. Gold advocates jumped to its defense, while critics took the offensive. As it turns out though, Soros was not really issuing a warning so much as he was explaining why he was making a considerable investment in gold bullion. Only days after calling gold the “ultimate asset bubble,” the financial press reported Soros had doubled his holdings of physical metal. Both the advocates and the critics had misinterpreted what Soros was trying to say.

Over the years, I have seen gold called among other things the asset of last resort, the ultimate safe haven, the fiduciary asset par excellence, and the investment of kings and the king of assets. I have never before heard it called the “ultimate asset bubble.” Let’s explore what might be behind Soros’ unusual description and his newly-found interest in the yellow metal.....read on

Double Dipping

By Jim Willie: Double Dip used to pertain to ice cream cones, but now to dreaded return to economic recession. Green Shoots used to refer to gardening projects, then to deceptive economic viewpoints. My favorite is the second half recovery mantra, indicative of totally clueless. This year's promised recovery in the second half of the year will feature a return to recession instead, thus stripping mainstream economists of any remaining credibility. The endless links in the chain are impressive by the clueless cast of economists that occupy the US landscape. The chain of ignominy includes gaping blind spots, blatantly wrong forecasts, minimized ignitions that spread crisis, misguided focus on goofy indicators, outright removal of important indicators, sloppy deception of monetization efforts, clumsy justification of Wall Street welfare, backwards perception of Too Big To Fail banks, and lying before the USCongress. The nation is dominated by the misguided who profess any benefits at all from 'Hand to Mouth' approaches like tax rebates, purchase credits, jobless insurance extensions, and helicopter drops. Their worst investments are their biggest investments, like Fannie Mae and AIG nationalizations travesties. Harken back only to last winter, when economists were talking about a second half recovery, running all the red lights and stop signs. Then they shifted the misdirection to claims of a jobless recovery, which should evoke laughter from its impossibility....read on

Silver - A Historical Perspective

I thought seeing that we are on a historical theme today I would introduce to this blog's readers Charles Savoie. Charles writes regular detailed essays discussing the history of silver in the early to mid 20th Century. An excellent resource to understand how the current silver market arrived at such dislocated levels.

Gold, Silver& The Monetary Problem

Treasury Official Lies About Gold

Jim Rickards interviewed

Jim Rickards is interviewed on King World News. Jim and Eric King discuss the historical parallels between the decline and fall of the Roman Empire and the current state of the USA. They also marvel at the fact the Eastern Roman Empire survived for another 1,000yrs after the Western empire fell due to a simplified govt. and a 10% flat tax rate.

Part I

Part II

Gold price falling as bullion banks wind back short positions

From Arabian Money.net: Something major is a foot in the paper gold markets of the COMEX. The major bullion banks have been winding back their short futures positions in the past couple of weeks.

This followed a statement by the CTFC chairman about enforcing strict limits on the short positions of the major players to avoid market manipulation. That falls under the new powers of the financial sector reform bill in the US.....read on

A Store of Rubbish

By Peter Souleles, Sydney: Rest assured that the price and position of gold are underpinned and guaranteed by spendthrift governments and accommodating central bankers who do not understand that they cannot generate more and more public debt in the process of taking the place of unemployed workers and maxed out consumers and plugging the gaping holes left by insolvent banks and corporations. Moreover they will compound the problem by allowing the concentration of wealth and income into fewer and fewer hands. They will however continue this stupid process until they are forced to print a fresh load of worthless paper with which to pay back everyone in useless currency....read on

The Keiser Report

This week Max Keiser and co-host Tracy Herbert look at the latest scandals of fetishes for black swans; American youth unconcerned by the coming collapse of their Social Security they bought and paid for; Tony Blair's 2007 photo op with Colonel Gaddafi. In the second half of the show, Max interviews Ned Naylor-Leyland of Cheviot Asset Management about the silver market. Note the excellent question supplied by ABC's Senior Metals Analyst, and author of this blog, at the 14:08 minute mark........watch here

Why gold is still the best buy for Agora investors

By Arabian Money: Spotting the consensus buy at an event like the Agora Financial Investment Symposium in Vancouver last week is a good indicator of the way markets will move. Two years ago they got the stock market crash spot on.

This year the consensus pick among this line-up of contrarian speakers was gold by a mile. The 1,000 attendees heartily agreed....read on

The Enigmatic Silver Miners

By Jeff Nielson: Silver is roughly 17 times as plentiful as gold, as an element in the Earth's crust. Thus, it is no surprise that over the course of nearly 5,000 years, the gold/silver ratio has averaged approximately 15:1. What is surprising is how this ratio has been so thoroughly perverted by the manipulations of the anti-gold cabal - to sit at one of its most lop-sided extremes in history: currently greater than 60:1.

Under any circumstances, this ratio is obviously unsustainable. However, with the "industrial" usages of silver literally causing the vast majority of the world's silver stockpiles to be "consumed", there is less silver in the world today (relative to gold) than at any time in more than 4,000 years. Thus, at a time when the gold/silver ratio should be at its lowest level in history, it hovers at the opposite extreme - arguably the greatest disconnection between price and fundamentals in the history of markets....read on

Bullion, coin dealers call for investigation of U.S. coin blanks supply

From Mineweb: A congressional subcommittee has been asked to investigate the growing backlog in and foreign procurement of U.S. bullion and collectors' precious metals coin blanks manufactured by the U.S. Mint. Witnesses before and members of the U.S. House Subcommittee on Domestic Monetary Policy have urged Congress to direct the U.S. Mint to buy U.S. manufactured blanks for gold and silver bullion coins and discontinue the practice of using Australian-made blanks.

Ranking Subcommittee Member Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, said he opposes the Mint's current efforts to gain greater power in determining the composition of circulating coinage."We could not maintain the gold standard nor the silver standard. We could not maintain the copper standard, and now we cannot even maintain the zinc standard," Paul noted. "Paper money inevitably breeds inflation and destroys the value of currency."

Michael B. Clark, president of the Diamond State Depository, a subsidiary of the Dillon Gage group, one of 12 authorized purchasers of American Eagle Silver Bullion Coins, told the subcommittee, "The Mint's inability to keep pace with demand has had a negative and unnecessary impact on the investment and hobby community."

He added that the Mint's reliance on just three suppliers for planchets or blanks "is flawed. Moreover, there is some irony in the fact that while Congress requires the Mint to procure the gold for its Eagle bullion coins from newly mined U.S. deposits, the Mint then ships that gold to Australia to be made into blanks. Then, the fabricated blanks are later shipped back to the United States for the production of coins."....read on

The Death of Paper Money

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard: As they prepare for holiday reading in Tuscany, City bankers are buying up rare copies of an obscure book on the mechanics of Weimar inflation published in 1974.....read on

Platinum could outshine gold

From the UK Telegraph: Platinum demand should improve in the fourth quarter, according to Nick Moore, a metal analyst at RBS, and he sees strong upside for prices in the next few years. "We continue to expect significant upside to the platinum price with a 2013 average of $2,000 per ounce,"....read on

The Sultans of Swing

by Gordan T Long: The news rocked the global gold market when an almost obscure line item in the back of a 216 page document released by an equally obscure organization was recently unearthed. Thrust into the unwanted glare of the spotlight, the little publicized Bank of International Settlements (BIS) is discovered to have accepted 349 metric tons of gold in a $14B swap. Why? With whom? For what duration? How long has this been going on? This raises many questions and as usual with all $617T of murky unregulated swaps, we are given zero answers. It is none of our business!.....read on

Crossing over to the Dark Side

CFTC Commissioner Bart Chilton discusses the new financial regulations, dark markets, and positions limits in commodity markets. This could potentially impact the ongoing short side manipulations in the silver market.

SMOKING GUNS OF USTREASURY MONETIZATION

By Jim Willie: A significant feature of fiat money systems is the privilege for the custodian of the reserve currency to engage in regular practices of ham-fisted monetary management, even permission for fraudulent centers to flourish, surely developing a debt monster that an economy grows dependent upon. Fannie Mae might be the most offensive blight on such privilege.....read on

The Coming Silver Supernova

By Lorimer Wilson: "Few investment opportunities arise in our lifetime like silver. The stage is set for a silver price percentage gain of extraordinary magnitude! Forget the popular refrain of "Got Gold?" and make some additions to your portfolio to take advantage of the coming silver supernova!".....read on

Why the silver price looks set to surge

By Joss Smith: Well, the strongest recommendation for silver at this time is that it is both a precious metal and an industrial metal. And that means two opportunities to profit. The first will be if economies continue to recover and industrial demand rises. The second is as an inflation hedge if economies perform less well than I expect.

Silver is an investment 'each-way bet' - we could win on one count, or we could win on both. And having lagged the price of gold, now is a great time to buy into silver.....read on

Is Now a Good Time to Buy Gold?

By Jeff Clark of Casey Research: While we’re convinced gold and gold stocks are destined for much higher levels, buying when prices are low can mean the difference between a double or triple and a ten-bagger.....read on

Doug Casey still very gloomy

From Arabianmoney.net:

Alternative investment guru Doug Casey stayed true to his gloomy view of a second phase of the Greater Depression that we are living through in his presentation in Vancouver this morning.

He thinks markets are presently in something of a ’sweet spot’ or the ‘eye of the hurricane’ and that very shortly the volatility will return....read on

Explained Time and Time Again: Currency Induced Cost Push Hyperinflation

By Jim Sinclair: "Nothing will unnerve the paper gold shorts more quickly and do more to undercut their confidence than to strip them of the real metal and force them to come up with more hard gold bullion to make good on deliveries. "Stand and Deliver or Go Home" should be the rallying cry of the gold longs to the paper gold shorts." --Trader Dan Norcini

If gold market participants were all tank drivers their machine would have but one gear - reverse. The smallest book in the world is the book of confirmed gold price visionaries.

Someone says deflation and the long gold positions hit the fan. Gold banks make their short covers even though the fuel in Bernanke's Helicopter Money Drop is founded in the dreaded use of the "D" word.

People are so fixed in present time that they cannot picture a euro back towards its high and the dollar back towards its low because the financial condition of the USA dwarfs the problems of the USA.

Hyperinflation is always the product of a loss of confidence in currency resulting in a "Currency Produced Cost-Push Hyperinflation."

No one with a synapse talking to another synapse expects a "Demand-Pull Inflation."

All hyperinflation in modern history has occurred for one reason, and one reason only. That is loss of confidence in currency.

Loss of confidence in a currency can be brought about by many reasons, but there is one constant factor. When hyperinflation has occurred in modern history EVERY economy involved was decimated as and when it occurred.

It has never been caused by "Demand-Pull," but always and without exception caused by "Currency Induced Cost Push Hyperinflation."

The nonsense being spread by the F-TV taking heads is that the Fed is out of ammunition to fight deflation. That is raving BS. The Fed can and will do QE to infinity which is restricted as a tool by nothing whatsoever. The ECB will not be far behind the Fed.

Argue all you want, but this is exactly what is going to happen starting now. Stop being glib. Study hyperinflation in modern times listed below before you ask me to explain it one more time.

What is out there today QE wise is enough to result in hyperinflation as confidence falls in currencies due to two characteristics, QE and volatility.

Try meditating on the concept of "Currency Induced Cost Push Hyperinflation," rather than loading your pants over gold banks manipulation full of sound and fury, but meaningless in the great scheme of things.

Examples of hyperinflation in modern times:

Angola, Argentina, Belarus, Bolivia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Chile, China, Congo, Free City of Danzig, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Japan, Madagascar, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Russia, Taiwan, Turkey, Ukraine, United States, Yugoslavia

Silver - The Secret is Out!

As an investment metal, silver is gaining rapidly in popularity. Silver unlike gold has significant industrial uses, in fact more patents are issued each year for inventions using silver than all other metals combined.

Silver is the best conductor of electricity & heat and is the most reflective of all metals. Also modern medicine has recently rediscovered silver's anti-bacterial qualities, actually before antibiotics were invented silver was the treatment of choice for infections. This germ fighting property has recently lead to an explosion in products containing silver, from silver impregnated sports wear (to kill the germs which cause body odor), fabrics for public transport and airline seats to prevent the spread of infections, coatings for fridges & washing machines and even in antiperspirant sprays and band-aids!

As the best conductor of electricity silver is used in solar panels to increase efficiency and in wiring, switches and soldiering contacts Another growing use of silver is in batteries, silver oxide batteries (like the one in your watch) are increasing being used to power larger devices as they store the most power to size of any battery.

As you can see silver is used everywhere, almost every modern device you name will contain a minute amount of silver. This low use per unit means that almost all of this silver will never be recycled.

The life cycle of gold often described as being dug up, refined, poured into a bar and then reburied in a bank vault. For silver after being refined it will most likely be used in a disposable application, a mobile phone or a battery all of which tend to end up buried in a land fill. It is unfortunate fact of our disposable society, gold is horded but silver is destroyed!

The fact that silver is not often recycled, whilst a huge waste of the energy required to mine and refine it, is a huge bonus to silver investors. Whilst the world's inventory of gold tends to increase slightly over time, the inventory of silver has plunged over the last 60 years. Whilst most governments hold gold as part of their reserves, some like the US, Germany and China holding over a 1,000 tons each, no central government holds a significant amount of silver.

Psst, Do you want to know a secret that only 0.001% of the world's population knows?

Whilst silver is 18 times more plentiful in the earth's crust than gold (1), silver being lighter and more reactive makes it easier to find as it occurs closer to the surface of the ground and can be mined as byproduct of other metals.

Why is this a good feature for investors? Because anything easy to find is used to excess and silver being used by humans for money and utensils for over 6,000 years means all the “easy” silver has been found, as can be shown by the fact that only 9 times as much silver is mined each year compared to gold (2). This has in part lead to over 60 years of inventory depletion of silver.

We now have reached a situation that has never occurred in human history, there is now less silver in bullion form (coins and bars) available for investors to purchase than there is gold! – read that last sentence again. Silver for the investor is rarer than gold! This has NEVER happened before. It is estimated that there are 5 billion ounces of gold in bullion form in the world and possibly only 500 million ounces of silver in bullion form. A factor of 10 to 1 in favour of silver. Yet silver currently sells for approx. 65 times less than gold.

Note: All silver sold by ABC is the highest investment grade silver, refined to 99.9% purity (three nines) and attracts no GST in Australia.

References:
(1) CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics
(2) USGS: 2008 Minerals Handbooks:
http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/silver/myb1-2008-silve.pdf
http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/gold/myb1-2008-gold.pdf

Adrian Douglas examines the ratio between the supply of gold and the U.S. dollar

GATA board member Adrian Douglas examines the ratio between the supply of gold and the U.S. dollar and concludes that the dollar's gold backing has fallen to a mere 2.3 percent and that the real dollar value of gold now approaches $53,000 per ounce.....read on

The Keiser Report

Latest Keiser Report discusses Paul the Octopus, faith based currencies and gold.....watch here

Eric Sprott interviewed

Billionaire hedge fund mgr, Eric Sprott discusses gold, silver, market conditions and possible QE2.....listen here

Fed to push rates lower? Some traders are betting on it

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The big question ahead of U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke's Congressional testimony on Wednesday is whether a weaker economy could prompt the Fed to push already rock-bottom borrowing costs even lower.

Some traders are already betting on it.

Since July 2, when a U.S. government report showed overall employment fell for the first time this year, interest has risen in options on CME Group Inc's Fed funds futures that are profitable only if short-term rates fall.

The bets pay off if the rate at which banks borrow from each other overnight -- the so-called Fed funds rate -- drops below 0.12 percent.

The Fed has kept its target for this benchmark rate at between zero and 0.25 percent since December 2008, to spark and then nurture recovery from the worst U.S. economic downturn since the Great Depression.

So far this year the actual, or effective, rate has hovered at around 0.16 percent.

But signs of a soft economy are intensifying, with consumer sentiment at a one-year low, housing starts down, and unemployment at a lofty 9.5 percent.

And at the Fed's policy-setting panel's most recent meeting, officials discussed the possible need for further steps to boost the economy if it takes a turn for the worse.

At $10.42 apiece, the Fed funds options are an inexpensive way to buy rate protection for $5 million against such a step, said Todd Colvin, a vice president at MF Global in Chicago.

"It's the kind of insurance you don't want to buy, but you need to," he said. "You need to have some defense for something that you never thought could happen."

All told, traders have insured more than $380 billion against rates dropping sometime between November and February, data from CME shows. That's up from $273 billion on July 1, the day before the June unemployment report.

Open interest -- the technical term for the number of contracts in existence -- jumped fastest in options that expire at the end of February, with traders insuring $71.9 million against lower rates by then, up from $28.8 million on July 1.

Most of those bets were placed after the Fed released minutes of its June 22-23 policy meeting that showed the committee discussed the possibility of easing.

Many traders reacted to that news, and other signs of a weakening economy, by deferring expectations for the Fed's next rate hike. Fed fund futures are now pricing a first rate increase for June 2011, compared to expectations of an April rate hike before the minutes were released.

The Fed is seen as having limited tools for easing monetary policy further than it already has. A small but growing number of traders are seeking protection in case it tries.

"We're really talking about the mood in the market shifting its perception," said Kevin Cooke, a market analyst for Peak6 in Chicago. "We're seeing it show up in the markets, where some traders are willing to place a hedge, or a bet, on the possibility of interest rates going lower."

Ron Paul cuts through the Govt. lies and Statistics

Gold, Silver & Copper being accepted as Money

By Dan Armstrong: New types of money are popping up across Mid-Michigan and supporters say, it's not counterfeit, but rather a competing currency.

Right now, you can buy a meal or visit a chiropractor without using actual U.S. legal tender.

They sound like real money and look like real money. But you can't take them to the bank because they're not made at a government mint. They're made at private mints.

"I sell three or four every single day and then I get one or two back a week," said Dave Gillie, owner of Gillies Coney Island Restaurant in Genesee Township.

Gillie also accepts silver, gold, copper and other precious metals to pay for food.

He says, if he wanted to, he could accept marbles.

"Do people have to accept dollars or money? No, they don'," Gillie said. "They can accept anything they want or they can refuse to accept anything."

He's absolutely right.

The U.S. Treasury Department says the Coinage Act of 1965 says "private businesses are free to develop their own policies on whether or not to accept cash, unless there is a state law which says otherwise."

That allows gas stations to say they don't accept 50- or $100 bills after a certain time of day in hopes of not getting robbed.

A chiropractic office in Lapeer County's Deerfield Township allows creativity when it comes to payment.

"This establishment accepts any form of silver, gold, chicken, apple pie, if someone works it out with me," said Jeff Kotchounian of Deerfield Chiropractic. "I've taken many things."

Chinese Economists Call For Government To Ditch U.S. Treasuries And Buy Gold

By Vincent Fernando: A former advisor to the Chinese central bank, and influential economist, has called for his nation to diversify away from U.S. treasury holdings.

This comes after China cut its U.S. treasury holdings by $32.5 billion in May:

Reuters:

"Although assets in other currencies and forms are not an ideal replacement for U.S. Treasury bonds, diversification should be a basic principle," Yu wrote in the China Securities Journal.

"When demand for U.S. Treasury securities is strong, it's a rare opportunity for us to gradually pull back. That way, it will not have a big impact on prices and China will not suffer too much," he said.

Zhang Monan, a researcher with the State Information Center, a think tank under the powerful National Development and Reform Commission, told the paper that China should invest more of its $2.5 trillion of foreign exchange reserves, the world's largest stockpile, in hard assets such as gold.

Moody's Downgrades Ireland's Credit Rating

From CNN: Moody's downgraded Ireland for the second time in a year Monday. In a familiar refrain, the rating agency pointed to deteriorating government finances and weak growth prospects as the country cleans up after a massive real estate bust.

Ireland's economy contracted 7% last year, and the nation's debt load as a share of economic output could quadruple by the time the crisis peaks, Moody's said.....read on

Truth about Markets - London

The Latest Truth about markets - London......listen here

Fed comments on 5-6 year US recovery send stocks down

From Arabianmoney.net: It was hardly surprising that the comments in the Beige Book by the Fed that the US recovery may take five to six years contributed to a 2.9 per cent fall in the S&P 500 by the close on Friday.

There was also news that US price levels have fallen for three months in a row for the first time since the 1930s. Deflation is back. This is the stuff of a depression not a recovery....read on

Market Update: Silver

Outspoken commodities bull, Jim Rogers has recently been taking a shine to silver. While, he isn't abandoning his gold positions just yet, he said that depressed metals such as silver and palladium represent some of the best buys right now. Silver is currently trading at nearly 60-70% below its all time highs. Silver reached its high of $50.35 in 1980.

Analysts predict that silver prices could reach $21 to $22 by the end of the year. From an investment point of view, silver has performed pretty well during the past 20 years. Poor man's gold has risen in price from a low of around $3.50 in the early '90s to the current highs of around $18. This has given investors an annual return of about 9%.

Aside from being a possible value play in relation to gold, silver has a lot going for it in the industrial world. The metal has several uses in automotive sector and electronics manufacturing. Silver may get a boost from new uses in renewable energy. New technologies in solar cells and silver-oxide smart grid batteries could use demand for the mineral skyrocket. Currently accounting for 70% of the world's total industrial use, consumption in China is on the rise.

Market Forcast: Platinum & Palladium

Author: Dorothy Kosich
Tuesday , 29 Jun 2010

RENO, NV -

A combination of constrained supplies, rising fabrication and increased investor interest in PGMs is expected to drive these metals prices higher in the near future, New York metals consultants CPM said in a presentation Tuesday.

In CPM's Platinum Group Metals Yearbook 2010, the analysts expect platinum demand to benefit from the global economic recovery this year.

Investors purchasing platinum for its safe haven attributions are likely to be outnumbered by those purchasing the metal for its tight market balance. Nevertheless, CPM said, "Investors are expected to remain attracted to platinum because of the potential for price appreciation based on the metal's positive supply and demand fundamentals."

Platinum ETF investment holdings are forecast to continue to rise this year.

"Given the forecast for strong investment demand during 2010, there is an expectation that there will not be sufficient metal coming into the market from newly refined supplies to meet both rising fabrication demand as well as robust investment demand," CPM suggested. "This scenario suggests an extremely tight market, which would push platinum prices higher."

CPM forecasts that global platinum mine production may rise 5.6% this year to 6,658,461 ounces.

The largest platinum producer South Africa "is confronted with certain resource constraints which are not expected to be resolved in the near future and are expected to inhibit supply from the country, irrespective of how high metals prices rise."

New mine production coming on line is expected to boost South African output to 5,112,174 ounces this year, up from 4,845,000 platinum ounces mined in South Africa in 2009.

Platinum production from Russia is forecast to increase from 831,000 ounce in 2009 to 890,000 ounces this year, according to the yearbook.

CPM projects that total newly refined platinum supplies will rise 5.5% from 7,043,000 ounces last year to 7,468,461 ounces this year.

Secondary platinum recovery, which fell 25% last year to 750,000 ounces, is forecast to increase 8% this year to 810,000 ounces due to the present improvement in platinum prices and pick up in the auto sector.

"Platinum fabrication demand is forecast to rise at a healthy pace during 2010," CPM advised, "driven largely by an improvement in global economic activity and restocking of metal by users."

Total platinum fabrication demand dropped 4.1% to 6,584,000 ounces in 2009. The yearbook projects fabrication demand will recover 8.4% to 7,137,000 ounces this year. However, CPM predicts the growth in demand for platinum jewelry during 2010 "is forecast to be relatively weak compared to 2009."

"The declining platinum price volatility, at least during the first three months of 2010, coupled with an improving economic environment that could boost discretionary spending among consumers, are both factors that could supply platinum jewelry demand," CPM suggested.

In their analysis, CPM noted investor interest in platinum futures remained high in 2009 and early this year. Commodity funds and other institutional investors held large net long positions throughout last year.

Combined trading volumes of platinum declined 30.4% to 101.7 million ounces on Nymex and Tocom last year.

Unfortunately, there were no Platinum Eagle coin sales by the U.S. Mint in 2009 because the Mint had run out of coins due to strong investor demand. "The Mint plans to produce these coins sometime around July or August this year," CPM advised.

PALLADIUM

Total palladium supply reached 7.6 million ounces last year, the third consecutive year that total palladium supply declined. This year total supply is expected to increase 8.2% to 8,265,706 ounces, according to CPM's forecasts.

However, CPM cautioned, "The increase in supply is not expected to be enough to meet the needs of both fabricators and investors."

Meanwhile, total palladium fabrication demand dropped 7.5% last year to 7,170,500 ounces. Total fabrication demand is forecast to increase what CPM called "a healthy 8.2% pace in 2010, reaching 7,795,000 ounces."

In their analysis, CPM said palladium investment demand rose sharply last year and in the first quarter of 2010 due to several factors including the expectations of a tight supply/demand balance in the palladium market. The launch of a new palladium backed investment products and the continued increase in investor interest in commodities as an asset class also generated palladium investment demand.

Trading volume for palladium on both Nymex and Tocom was a combined 45.5 million ounces last year, down 44.1% from 81.4 million ounces traded in 2008. Combined inventories of palladium in both Nymex and Tocom vaults were up 46.1% for a total of 673,735 ounces at the end of last year.

Silver's Use As An Antibacterial Agent Has Huge Potential For Growth

By David Levenstein: For centuries, humans have used silver as an antibacterial agent for medicinal and food storage purposes. It was used by the Greeks and Romans as an anti-bacterial agent for healing and cleansing.....read on

Confidence Slides, Heightening Risk of a Slowdown

From Bloomberg: Confidence among U.S. consumers tumbled in July to the lowest level in a year, heightening the risk of a slowdown in economic growth.

The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan preliminary index of consumer sentiment decreased to 66.5, the lowest since August and less than the most pessimistic forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News.....read on

Fed's volte face sends the dollar tumbling

From the UK Telegraph: The euro rocketed to a two-month high of $1.29 and sterling jumped two cents to almost $1.54 after the Fed confessed that the US economy may not recover for five or six years. Far from winding down emergency stimulus, the bank may need a fresh blast of bond purchases or quantitative easing.

Usually the dollar serves as a safe haven whenever the world takes fright, and there was plenty of sobering news from China and other quarters on Thursday. Not this time. The US itself has become the problem.....read on

From ArabianMoney.net: Agora Financial founder and highly respected market commentator Bill Bonner is not tempted to sell his gold, despite the worry that deflation might persuade a few investors to sell. ‘If we were speculators, we might consider selling our gold,’ he says, ‘in tune with our deflation now, inflation later forecast. But we’re not gamblers. We hold gold because it represents real wealth, not because we think it will go up in price.....read on

The Keiser Report

The latest Keiser report: looks at the latest scandals of downgrading America, investors seeking security in gold, bank profit abominations and federal ponzis. In the second half of the show, Max talks to Stefan Molyneux of Freedomain Radio about the Canadian economy and housing bubble, the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and how to fix the world.....watch here

Recssion 2010 - Depression 2011?

By Aubie Baltin: The very same people (Bernanke, Geithner, Wall Street, the Media and all their Economists) who have consistently shown themselves to be untrustworthy are looking more and more like the clowns that they really are; when they try to convince us that paper money is less risky than Gold and Silver. That statement alone illustrates their complete lack of credibility and understanding of risk and reward, as they contend that any austerity in the USA will lead to a "very rough second half": Especially in terms of the jobs market.....read on

Gold & Fiat Money

An epic essay by Sarel Oberholster on Gold & Fiat Money, one to show those doubting your interest precious metals: "I do not under any circumstance favor raising the price of gold. It would perpetuate that "barbarous metal" in international monetary use. We have quite rightly broken the link between gold and our domestic money. We should also break the link between gold and international money. The supply of money, neither domestic nor international, should not be dependent over the long run on the accidents of supply and demand in the marketplace for just one commodity." July 12, 1968 - Darryl R. Francis, President of the Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

And so it came to pass not long after the speech by Mr. Francis that in August 1971 US President Richard Nixon unilaterally broke the US$/gold peg and declared the US$ no longer convertible to gold. The convertibility of US$'s to gold was the last tenuous link between fiat currencies pegged to the US$ and gold. I pick up the tale of Gold and Fiat Money in January 1971 and will tell this tale with graphs. Graphs of fiat money; of consumer inflations and asset inflations; interest rates; central bank activities; gold prices; and official gold movements....read on

Trade Wars Final Nail in Coffin

From the Daily Bell: The vanishing American consumer and the coming trade war ... With American consumers pulling back, these other economies have also been slowing down. This means Obama won't easily find the export markets they need to create enough jobs to make up for the vanishing American consumer. President Barack Obama speaks about exports, jobs, and the economy, Wednesday, July 7, 2010, in the East Room of the White House in Washington. President Obama has vowed to double U.S. exports within the next five years. That's because exports are critical for rebooting the American economy. It's clear American consumers can't get the economy going on their own. They can't restart the jobs machine. They've run out of money and credit. It's not just that one out of four Americans is unemployed or underemployed (working part-time, overqualified, or at a lower wage than before). More significantly, the Great Recession burst the housing bubble that had let American consumers turn their homes into ATMs. Now the cash machines are closed.....read on

The Insidious Transformation of Markets into Casinos... How Brokers Became Bookies

By Ellen Brown: "You all are the house, you're the bookie. [Your clients] are booking their bets with you. I don't know why we need to dress it up. It's a bet." - Senator Claire McCaskill, Senate Subcommittee investigating Goldman Sachs (Washington Post, April 27, 2010).......read on

The End-Game and The Illusory Gold Bubble

By Darryl Robert Schoon: When the end-game began, gold was $35 per ounce. Today, gold is $1200. When the end-game is over, gold will be far higher.idway through 2010 we are approaching the end of the end-game, the resolution of the monetary imbalances that began in 1971. For more than 2500 years, gold was money: but, in 1971 that changed. After 1971, money was no longer connected to gold. For the first time in history, money had no intrinsic value.......read on

Truth about Markets - New Zealand

Max & Stacy discuss:
- anti-whaling movement and the success of economic actions taken.
- the US spy agencies given access to the banking system SWIFT.
- internet social networking and virtual currencies.
- false flag cyber attacks.
- the strength of the Australian & Canadian dollars

........listen here

Gold: Barbarous Relic or Life Saver for the People?

Brilliant Video detailing life and death in Zimbabwe. Life is given by Gold, death comes to those without Gold. Is this why God decreed Gold & Silver as Money?
Note: Every man-made currency pretending to be money has failed eventually, all 3800 of them since 407BC.

Chinese rating agency strips Western nations of AAA status

From the UK Telegraph: China's leading credit rating agency has stripped America, Britain, Germany and France of their AAA ratings, accusing Anglo-Saxon competitors of ideological bias in favour of the West.....read on

The Keiser Report

Latest Keiser Report looks at the latest scandals of IMF forecasts and commercial banks pawning their nations’ gold reserves to the BIS. In the second half of the show, Max interviews Karl Denninger about market manipulation and flash crashes.....watch here

Staggering Stats About Silver Supply

By The Mogambo Guru: ......Other interesting facts are that by 2008 worldwide demand for silver was about 900 million ounces a year, having grown by an average of 19.5 million ounces a year for the previous five years, while supply from mining and scrap was only 858.5 million ounces and growing at only 2.2% a year, meaning that supply was being outstripped by over 40 million ounces per year the whole time!

If that is not enough of a supply/demand imbalance to make you jump to your feet in eagerness to buy silver, longer-term it gets more interesting, because "in 1900 there were 12 billion ounces of silver in the world. By 1990, that figure had been reduced to around 2.2 billion ounces," and now "today, there are less than 1 billion ounces in above-ground refined silver.".....read on

Moody's downgrades Portugal's debt rating

LISBON, Portugal — Moody's credit rating agency downgraded Portugal's debt on Tuesday, casting fresh doubt on the country's ability to weather its debt crisis as the economy weakens.

Moody's Investors Service cut Portugal's government bond ratings to A1 from Aa2. The move deepens the country's financial woes because foreign lenders will likely demand higher interest returns for the risk of loaning it money.....read on

Bear Market Bounce

By Warren Bevan: Equity markets throughout most of the world rebounded very nicely this past week retracing roughly half the past two weeks of declines. This is how bear markets work, they take two steps down, and one step back up. It's exactly the inverse of a bull market.

The weakness we are once again becoming accustomed to should resume early in the week. While it's no fun, it must be accepted that the primary trend is lower now for equity markets.....read on

From Mark J. Lundeen: Here are my problems with "Green Energy." No doubt about it, the Western States could generate the "Green Power" necessary to power every electric car on the East Coast, and then some. But as always, the Devil is in the Details. Solar Power Farms would be huge consumers of silver for their Solar Collectors. But are the necessary quantities of silver available, at prices that would make this project economically feasible? I've never seen this critical point discussed by Solar Power Proponents......read more

Creating Order in the Euro Zone - Merkel's Rules for Bankruptcy

From Spiegel Online: Fearing a lasting burden on taxpayers, the German government is preparing a set of insolvency rules for countries in the euro zone. It would require private investors to bear some of the financial burden and force the affected countries to give up some sovereignty. The plan is guaranteed to meet with resistance.....read on