Friday, June 21, 2013

Mass protests hit Brazil

Follow the latest on the protests on twitter at #changebrazil

From RussiaToday

Precious Metals Plunge

SE Asian Markets Tumble


The rout in global equity markets has continued today.

From Thailand:

Bangkokpost.com

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Thai shares plunged as much as 3.29% yesterday as investors around the world took flight after the US Federal Reserve's announcement that it could start winding down its quantitative easing (QE) programme... 

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From Singapore:

Straits Times

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Singapore shares opened lower on Friday, with the benchmark Straits Times Index at 3,074.38, down 1.88 per cent, or 58.88 points.

About 202 million shares exchanged hands.

Losers beat gainers 251 to 11.

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From India:

Times of India

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MUMBAI: The BSE benchmark sensex on Friday lost over 79 points in early trade as stocks of FMCG, metal, auto, healthcare and banking sectors fell on sustained capital outflows, tracking a weak trend in the global market.

Extending losses for the second session, the 30-share index fell by 79.13 points, or 0.42%, to 18,640.162. The index had lost 526.41 points in the previous session.

Similarly, the wide-based National Stock Exchange Nifty declined by 14.15 points, or 0.25%, to 5,641.75.

Gold and Silver Meltdown

.......and doesn't the mainstream love telling you.

Gold Trade Most Bearish Since ’10 as Fed Spurs Drop

From Bloomberg.com

Gold traders are the most bearish in 3 1/2 years after prices fell to the lowest since 2010 following Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s comments that the central bank may start curbing stimulus.

Fifteen analysts surveyed by Bloomberg expect prices to fall next week, with six bullish and five neutral, the largest proportion of bears since January 2010. The metal slumped below $1,300 an ounce for the first time since September 2010 yesterday. Investors sold 520.7 metric tons valued at about $21.7 billion from exchange-traded products this year.

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Julian Assange: 1 Year in Limbo

From breakingtheset

Lee Camp - Facts About The Free Market That Will Blow Your Mind

From LeeCamp2

Clarke and Dawe - The Upcoming Australian Election

Given the bloodbath in the precious metals markets and the Aussie dollar at the moment I thought we needed a laugh before we all did something rash.

From ClarkeAndDawe

No Hyperinflation for Niall Ferguson and NYSE as the Original Dark Pool

From theprimeinterest

Peter Schiff and Rick Santelli on Ben Bernanke

From SchiffReport

Coming to a No-Fly Zone near you - Russia unveils S-300 SAM replacement

From RussiaToday

Ron Paul on Gold


Silver Makes Antibiotics Thousands of Times More Effective

From Scientific American

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Like werewolves and vampires, bacteria have a weakness: silver. The precious metal has been used to fight infection for thousands of years — Hippocrates first described its antimicrobial properties in 400 bc — but how it works has been a mystery. Now, a team led by James Collins, a biomedical engineer at Boston University in Massachusetts, has described how silver can disrupt bacteria, and shown that the ancient treatment could help to deal with the thoroughly modern scourge of antibiotic resistance. The work is published today inScience Translational Medicine.

“Resistance is growing, while the number of new antibiotics in development is dropping,” says Collins. “We wanted to find a way to make what we have work better.”

Collins and his team found that silver — in the form of dissolved ions — attacks bacterial cells in two main ways: it makes the cell membrane more permeable, and it interferes with the cell’s metabolism, leading to the overproduction of reactive, and often toxic, oxygen compounds. Both mechanisms could potentially be harnessed to make today’s antibiotics more effective against resistant bacteria, Collins says.

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Well it could have been worse

Both Gold and Silver have drifted lower in overnight trade on the NY markets, with Gold currently $1278 and Silver $19.69. It will be interesting to see if the drop below the physiological round numbers of $1300 and $20 causes a rush of physical buyers today in Australia and Asia.


Charts from goldprice.org

The Little Au$$ie Batler

Another fallout of Uncle Ben threatening to take the pedal off the metal is that the Aussie dollar has fallen off a cliff, as hot money flows back to hide under the skirt of Uncle Ben Sam.

Chart from xe.com

Bill Gross - Markets are reading Bernanke all wrong