Irish Government Collapses, Six Cabinet Members Resign

From Mish:

In a fitting tribute to a disgraceful performance by Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen in which Cowen crammed losses of Irish banks down the throats of taxpayers, his government has at long last collapsed. Six cabinet members (40%) resigned representing justice, health, trade and enterprise, defense and transport. Earlier in the week his foreign minister resigned making the total six.

I have a wide selection of articles to choose from. Here is a representative sample.

Irish Central reports Irish leader Brian Cowen calls an election for March 11

Irish Prime Minster Brian Cowen has called an Irish election for March 11th.

Speaking to a packed parliament, Cowen stated that he was reassigning six cabinet portfolios after six of his ministers resigned.

The proceedings in Irish Parliament had been suspended as opposition leaders refused to move forward until Prime Minister Brian Cowen explained the six recent ministerial resignations.

Rumors of an impending collapse of the government and an immediate election were circulating as the Green Party met to decide whether they would withdraw support for the government.

Earlier today parliament was suspended after rowdy scenes. Opposition leader, Fine Gael’s Enda Kenny demanded that proceeding be suspended until Cowen could explain what was going on within the Government.

Kenny said “This is the worst government in history…This would not have happened even in the days of great dictators. It is unprecedented, what you have done.”

He continued “These are the last days of the worst government in the history of the state.”

Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Innovation Batt O’Keefe tendered his resignation this morning. Wednesday saw Mary Harney from Health, Dermot Ahern from Justice, Noel Dempsey from transport and Tony Killeen from defense all resigned. These followed the resignation of Micheal Martin from foreign affairs who resigned after a failed leadership challenge.

Kenny said that the actions of Cowen had been a “cowardly, disgraceful act” and said he was “refusing to come in here today to tell the people of his country what is happening with a Government that has imploded, with a Government that is dysfunctional, that has disintegrated, and that had let our people down”......read on

Marc Faber's Outlook for 2011 - Mature economies to beat EMs, food inflation worrying

Time to switch from gold to silver?

From ArabianMoney.net:

Everybody is starting to talk about gold prices and how best to buy gold. Very few people talk about silver. The Financial Times left it out of their best investments of 2010 review, although it would have come top.

Now Rich Dad books’ author Robert Kiyosaki is trying to persuade gold bugs to swap their yellow metal for silver. He has actually been plugging away recommending gold and silver since 2005. Then gold was $600 an ounce and silver $10. Today gold is up by 125 per cent and silver prices have tripled........read on

Keiser Report: Corrupt Kleptocracy

Money, Banking and the Federal Reserve

Sales of 1-Ounce American Silver Coins Soar, U.S. Mint Says

From Bloomberg.com:

Sales of 1-ounce American Eagle silver coins are headed for a record this month, according to data from the U.S. Mint.

About 4,588,000 coins have been sold in January, according to data on the Mint website. That would be the highest monthly total since sales began in 1986.

Silver futures for March delivery dropped 11.1 cents, or 0.4 percent, to $28.801 an ounce on the Comex in New York today. The price touched a 30-year high of $31.275 on Jan. 3 and gained 84 percent last year as investor demand surged.

US-Sino Currency Rap Battle

From the Mao to the Deng to the Jiang to the Hu. You think you can keep on telling us what to do!

Are you Ready to Rumble?

The latest report on what is in store for the world economy in 2011 by the cycles guru Martin Armstrong.......read here

World needs $100 trillion more credit, says World Economic Forum

Surely some of this "liquidity" will flow into the precious metals and commodities markets. The end of the bull market in gold and silver is nowhere in sight if this is the current thinking of the smartest guys in the room.....

From the UK Telegraph:

The world's expected economic growth will have to be supported by an extra $100 trillion (£63 trillion) in credit over the next decade, according to the World Economic Forum.

This doubling of existing credit levels could be achieved without increasing the risk of a major crisis, said the report from the WEF ahead of its high-profile annual meeting in Davos.

But researchers warned that leaders must be wary of new credit "hotspots", where too much lending takes place, as the world emerges from a financial catastrophe blamed in large part "to the failure of the financial system to detect and constrain" these areas of unsustainable debt.

"Pockets of credit grew rapidly to excess – and brought the entire financial system to the brink of collapse," said the report, written in conjunction with consulting firm McKinsey. "Yet, credit is the lifeblood of the economy, and much more of it will be needed to sustain the recovery and enable the developing world to achieve its growth potential."

The global credit stock has already doubled in recent years, from $57 trillion to $109 trillion between 2000 and 2009, according to the report....read on

25 Facts on the US vs China

#1 The U.S. trade deficit with China increased by 26 percent during 2010.

#2 Since China entered the WTO in 2001, the U.S. trade deficit with China has grown by an average of 18% per year.

#3 The United States has now had a negative trade balance every single year since 1976.

#4 The U.S. trade deficit with China during August was more than 4,600 times larger than the U.S. trade deficit with China was for the entire year of 1985.

#5 According to a new report from the Economic Policy Institute, between 2001 and 2008 lost 2.4 million jobs due to the growing trade deficit with China. Every single state in America experienced a net job loss due to our trade deficit with China during this time period.

#6 China is now the number one producer in the world of wind and solar power.

#7 Back in 1970, 25 percent of all jobs in the United States were manufacturing jobs. Today, only 9 percent of the jobs in the United States are manufacturing jobs.

#8 China now possesses the fastest supercomputer on the entire globe.

#9 Back in 1998, the United States had 25 percent of the world’s high-tech export market and China had just 10 percent. Ten years later, the United States had less than 15 percent and China's share had soared to 20 percent.

#10 China now has the world's fastest train and the world's biggest high-speed rail network.

#11 The United States has lost a staggering 32 percent of its manufacturing jobs since the year 2000.

#12 The United States had been the leading consumer of energy on the globe for about 100 years, but this past summer China took over the number one spot.

#13 China has accumulated the largest stockpile of foreign currency reserves on the entire globe - $2.85 trillion.

#14 Stupid American companies keep handing Chinese companies our most advanced technology. Just consider the following example that was just reported in the New York Times....

G.E., in the partnership with a state-owned Chinese company, will be sharing its most sophisticated airplane electronics, including some of the same technology used in Boeing’s new state-of-the-art 787 Dreamliner.

#15 All of this new wealth has enabled China to dramatically upgrade and modernize their military forces. For example, China has actually developed a missile system that can destroy a U.S. aircraft carrier nearly 2,000 miles out to sea.

#16 China is now the number one supplier of components that are critical to the operation of U.S. defense systems.

#17 Since 2001, over 42,000 U.S. factories have closed down for good.

#18 Wealthy Chinese companies are now gobbling up U.S. businesses and U.S. infrastructure at a staggering pace.

#19 As of the end of 2009, less than 12 million Americans worked in manufacturing. The last time that less than 12 million Americans were employed in manufacturing was in 1941.

#20 The United States has 10 percent fewer "middle class jobs" than it did just ten years ago.

#21 According to Stanford University economics professor Ed Lazear, if the U.S. economy and the Chinese economy continue to grow at current rates, the average Chinese citizen will be wealthier than the average American citizen in just 30 years.

#22 Nobel economist Robert W. Fogel of the University of Chicago is projecting that the Chinese economy will be three times larger than the U.S. economy by the year 2040 if current trends continue.

#23 According to one recent study, China could become the global leader in patent filings by next year.

#24 Today, China controls over 90 percent of the total global supply of rare earth elements.

#25 According to one shocking new poll, 47 percent of Americans believe that China is the number one economic power in the world. Only 31 percent of those responding to the survey indicated that they believe that the United States is still the number one economic power.