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A powerful set of arguments for owning the yellow metal

Monetary expert Jim Rickards returns this week to share the insights from his latest work The New Case For Gold, a detailed and highly-researched study of the fundamentals likely to drive the price of gold bullion in the years to come.

Rickards is quite confident that the price is going higher — much higher in fact — as the current world fiat currency regimes falter, to be replaced by ones backed (at least in part) by bullion.

On the way to that outcome, expect the price to be subjugated to the interests and aims of the largest players on the geopolitical chessboard:

Is there gold price manipulation going on? Absolutely; there’s no question about it. That’s not just an opinion.

I spoke to a PhD statistician who works for one of the biggest hedge funds in the world. I can’t mention the name but it’s a household name, you would know the fund. This guy is a PhD statistician. He looked at COMEX opening prices and COMEX closing prices for a 10-year period and he was dumbfounded. He said…This is the most blatant case of manipulation I’ve ever seen. He said if you went into the aftermarket, bought after the close and sold before the opening every day, you would make risk-free profits. He said statistically that’s impossible unless there’s manipulation going on.

I spoke to Professor Rosa Abrantes-Metz at the New York University Stern School of Business. She is the leading expert on globe price manipulation. She actually testifies in some of these gold manipulation cases that are going on. She wrote a report reaching the same conclusions. It’s not just an opinion, it’s not just a deep, dark conspiracy theory. Here’s a PhD statistician and a prominent market expert lawyer, expert witness in litigation qualified by the courts, who independently reached the same conclusion.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Is The Pending Euro Collapse on Target From Our 2011 Forecast of 2016.202?

February 17, 2016

Is The Pending Euro Collapse on Target From Our 2011 Forecast of 2016.202?

The euro crisis appears to be unfolding right on target rather amazingly. Our target was published in “The Rise and Fall of the Euro” back in 2011. The target for the collapse in confidence was 2016.202. This comes into play March 13/14, 2016. It is rather amazing that we can target a specific event within time, years in advance, and watch these things unfold. This illustrates that TIME remains everything and humanity repeats a process that results in the same response over and over again throughout history. This also demonstrates that our forecasting is not based upon OPINION. With the euro unable to reach 116 of a rebound, this does not look very good in the next few weeks.

Here is what we published in that report:

From a timing perspective, the Bretton Woods System actually began with the operational start of the IMF on March 1, 1947 (1947.164). The euro began officially on January 1, 1999 (1999.002). The birth of the euro essentially completed the 51.6-year cycle between 1947 and 1999. The collapse of the euro appears to be due no later than 17.2 years from its birth, making the ideal target 2016.202, just 23.5 weeks ideally AFTER the peak on this current Economic Confidence Model wave 2015.75.

We Know How This Ends, Part 2

January 20, 2016

We Know How This Ends, Part 2

In March 1969, while Buba was busy in the quicksand of its swaps and forward dollar interventions, Netherlands Bank (the Dutch central bank) had instructed commercial banks in Holland to pull back funds from the eurodollar market in order to bring up their liquidity positions which had dwindled dangerously during this increasing currency chaos. At the start of April that year, the Swiss National Bank (Swiss central bank) was suddenly refusing its own banks dollar swaps in order that they would have to unwind foreign funds positions in the eurodollar market. The Bank of Italy (the Italian central bank) had ordered some Italian banks to repatriate $800 million by the end of the second quarter of 1969. It also raised the premium on forward lire at which it offered dollar swaps to 4% from 2%, discouraging Italian banks from engaging in covered eurodollar placements.

The “rising dollar” of 1969 had somehow become anathema to global banking liquidity even in local terms.

The FOMC, which had perhaps the best vantage point with which to view the unfolding events, documented the whole affair though stubbornly and maddeningly refusing to understand it all in greater context of radical paradigm banking and money alterations. In other words, the FOMC meeting MOD’s for 1968 and 1969 give you an almost exact window into what was occurring as it occurred, but then, during the discussions that followed, degenerating into confusion and mystification as these economists struggled to only frame everything in their own traditional monetary understanding – a religious-like tendency that we can also appreciate very well at this moment.

At the April 1969 FOMC meeting, Charles A. Coombs, Special Manager of the System Open Market Account, reported that the bank liquidity issue then seemingly focused on Germany was indeed replicated in far more countries.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

We Know How This Ends, Part 1

January 20, 2016

We Know How This Ends, Part 1

The finance ministers and representatives of central banks from the world’s ten largest “capitalist” economies gathered in Bonn, West Germany on November 20, 1968. The global financial system was then enthralled by a third major currency crisis of the past year or so and there was great angst and disagreement as to what to do about it. While sterling had become something of a recurring devaluation tendency and francs perpetually, it seemed, in disarray, this time it was the Deutsche mark that was the great object of conjecture and anger. What happened at that meeting, a discussion that lasted thirty-two hours, depends upon which source material you choose to dissect it. From the point of view of the Germans, it was a convivial exchange of ideas from among partners; the Americans and British, a sometimes testy and perhaps heated debate about clearly divergent merits; the French were just outraged.

The communique issued at the end of the “conference” only said, “The ministers and governors had a comprehensive and thorough exchange of views on the basic problems of balance-of-payments disequilibria and on the recent speculative capital movements.” In reality, none of them truly cared about the former except as may be controlled by the latter. These “speculative capital movements” became the target of focused energy which would not restore balance and stability but ultimately see the end of the global monetary system.

Some background is needed before jumping into West Germany’s financial energy. The gold exchange standard under the Bretton Woods framework had appeared to have lasted as far as this monetary conference, but it had ended in practicality long before. In the late 1950’s, central banks, the Federal Reserve primary among them, had rendered gold especially and increasingly irrelevant in settling the world’s trade finance.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Oil Bust Could End Dollar Domination

January 15, 2016

Oil Bust Could End Dollar Domination

The US dollar survived the collapse of Bretton Woods in the ‘70s because its use in crude oil transactions made it the king of reserve currencies, but can it survive a collapse of petro dollars? Can the world survive the catastrophic geopolitical consquences that would follow?

There is an overriding belief that the U.S. dollar can hold onto its status as the world’s king reserve currency simply because of petro dollars. But in recent years, a serious threat to this system has developed—and the risk of the dollar being dethroned is very real.

The U.S. dollar has reigned supreme since the end of WWII, when the Bretton Woods system gave it is initial power. With Bretton Woods’collapse in 1971, oil became its new saviour and kingmaker as the U.S. dollar became the prime currency for crude oil transactions.

In 1973, the U.S. made a pact with the Saudi King to conduct all crude oil trades in U.S. dollars—in return for U.S. protection of its oil fields. Because of world hunger for crude, the demand for U.S. dollars experienced a similar, sustained hunger.

The major producers of crude oil had an abundance of dollars, which was recycled back into the system to purchase dollar-denominated assets. The consumers pay for crude oil in dollars; hence, they always have to keep a steady reserve of dollars, thereby maintaining a high demand for the the currency.

This is now under threat, and history risks being repeated.

The Bretton Woods system failed due to the over valuation of the dollar as spending increased over the war in Vietnam war and America’s Great Society programs.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Sell The Bonds, Sell The Stocks, Sell The House —–Dread The Fed!

December 18, 2015

Sell The Bonds, Sell The Stocks, Sell The House —–Dread The Fed!

There is going to be carnage in the casino, and the proof lies in the transcript of Janet Yellen’s press conference. She did not say one word about the real world; it was all about the hypothecated world embedded in the Fed’s tinker toy model of the US economy.

Yes, tinker toys are what kids used to play with back in the 1950s and 1960s, and that’s when Janet acquired her school-girl model of the nation’s economy.

But since that model is so frightfully primitive, mechanical, incomplete, stylized and obsolete, it tells almost nothing of relevance about where the markets and economy now stand; or what forces are driving them; or where they are headed in the period just ahead.

In fact, Yellen’s tinker toy model is so deficient as to confirm that she and her posse are essentially flying blind. That alone should give investors pause—-especially because Yellen confessed explicitly that “monetary policy is an exercise in forecasting”.

Accordingly, her answers were riddled with ritualistic reminders about all the dashboards, incoming data and economic system telemetry that the Fed is vigilantly monitoring. But all that minding of everybody else’s business is not a virtue—-its proof that Yellen is the ultimate Keynesian catechumen.

This stupendously naïve old school marm still believes the received Keynesian scriptures as penned by the 1960s-era apostles James(Tobin), John (Galbraith), Paul (Samuelson) and Walter (Heller).

But c’mon.Those ancient texts have no relevance to the debt-saturated, state-dominated, hideously over-capacitated global economy of 2015. They just convey a stupid little paint-by-the-numbers simulacrum of what a purportedly closed domestic economy looked like even back then.

That is, before Richard Nixon had finally destroyed Bretton Woods and turned over the Fed’s printing presses to power aggrandizing PhDs; and before Mr. Deng had thrown out Mao’s little red book in favor of a central bank based credit Ponzi.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Market Manipulation Confusion

November 13, 2015

Market Manipulation Confusion

QUESTION: You say that long-term manipulations are impossible while short-term manipulations have been the focus of the bankers. Do you mean to say that not even governments can manipulate the economy perpetually? Are central banks buying US equities to manipulate the US stock market higher? It would seem that the Fed would then be accused of creating a bubble. What is going on?

Thank you.

ANSWER: Ever since Marx, the Age of “New Economics” as Volcker put it came to an end with the collapse of Bretton Woods and the Crash of 1974. Of course governments have tried to manipulate society and the economy. All governments operate out of their self-interest and they impose punishment as their weapon. They have falsified the statistics, revised them routinely especially CPI because they learned that everything was indexed to CPI so if you reduce the CPI you cut benefits without having to confront the people. After 1980, they removed real estate and replace it with rents using the argument that the former was investment not cost of living.

The entire game of manipulating society is to maintain their power. They historically will do whatever they need to do to achieve that goal. They routinely manipulate the truth using the press. Nobody will report that the Clintons not merely removed ALL restraints against the banks from Intrastate Banking to Glass-Steagall, but they also make student loans non-dischargable in bankruptcy at the bankers’ request so they could securitize them. Nobody will bring that up about Hillary because she is the favorite of the press. They attack Ben Carson and Trump all the time.

There is a HUGE difference from claiming these private people or governments CANmanipulate everything indefinitely and realizing that no matter who they are they CANNOT perpetually manipulate society or the economy. If the former is true, then there would be no crash and burn; just a flat-line. Sorry, people may not like that statement, but there is no proof that ANYTHING has been perpetually suppressed indefinitely.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Exorbitant Privilege: “The Dollar is Our Currency but Your Problem”

September 4, 2015

Exorbitant Privilege: “The Dollar is Our Currency but Your Problem”

The Global Monetary Architecture: Change is on the Horizon

There is no better way to descibe the international monetary system today than through the statement made in 1971 by U.S. Treasury Secretary, John Connally. He said to his counterparts during a Rome G-10 meeting in November 1971, shortly after the Nixon administration ended the dollar’s convertibility into gold and shifted the international monetary system into a global floating exchange rate regime that, “The dollar is our currency, but your problem.” This remains the U.S. policy towards the international community even today. On several occasions both the past and present chairpersons of the Fed, Ben Bernanke and Janet Yellen, have indicated it still is the U.S. policy as it concerns the dollar.

vying Two empires vying for supremacy?

Is China saying to the world, but more particularly to the U.S., “The yuan is our currency but your problem”? China’s move to weaken the Yuan against the US dollar is in fact a huge response to America’s resistance to reforming the international monetary framework. It’s telling American policy makers that the longer they delay acting on reforming the international monetary system, the harder and longer they are going to make it for the U.S. to climb out of their trade deficit and depreciate their currency to where they need it to be.

China has been preparing for this moment for several years by accumulating gold through its central bank but also by using banks/corporations and individuals. It has in recent years signed several international agreements to bypass the US dollar in international trade and use preferably the Yuan. It has created an alternative World Bank (Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank) and a gold fund to invest in gold mining in more than 60 countries.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

That 70s show – episode 4

August 29, 2015

That 70s show – episode 4

We have shown in the previous three episodes (episode 1, 2 and 3) how the US economy structurally changed after Nixon took the US off gold, letting the Federal Reserve do what it does best. Obviously, with the “hard” anchor of the US dollar cut loose, the rest followed suit. It is telling that the so-called post-Bretton Wood “gold standard” of all currencies, the Deutsche mark lost 65 per cent of its purchasing power from 1971 to 1990.

Also note that the French, with its inferior Franc lost 84 per cent of its purchasing power over the same, time hated the Germans for it. As a “victorious” nation of the Second World War, the French had a right to veto German unification, and would only agree to re-merge east and west if the Germans would give up their coveted mark and join the euro.

But we digress, in the this episode we will focus on debt levels within the context of unrestrained central banking.

Throughout history the US economy used to be leveraged, on average, 1.5 times GDP; total credit market debt fluctuated more or less within a tight range of maximum one standard deviation from its long term mean. Prior to 1971 the only time debt levels really got out of hand was during the Great Depression on back of a 45 per cent decline in nominal GDP. Total outstanding debt, in dollar terms actually fell by 12 per cent over the same time span.

So, the US economy was leveraged 1.5 times its annual output from 1840 to 1971 before fundamentally changing its trajectory. Needless to say, this low debt period was also when the US economy became the world’s largest and most sophisticated (see here) and ultimately a global hegemon.

Source: History of the United States from Colonial times to 1970, Federal Reserve, Bureau of Economic Analysis, Bawerk.net

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“If It Looks Like A Duck” – The Man In The Moon: Part 2

June 3, 2015

“If It Looks Like A Duck” – The Man In The Moon: Part 2

In part 2 of the “Man in the Moon” series we look at Paul Volcker’s roundtrip – monetary policies and their impacts from 1971 through the Great Leveraging to today. Part 1 can be found here.

If it Looks Like a Duck…

Prior to 1971, all global currencies were valued based on a fixed exchange rate system, commonly referred to as “Bretton Woods”. Each currency was directly linked to the US dollar’s fixed exchange rate to gold.

Bretton Woods effectively died in August 1971 (officially 1973) when the U.S. Treasury ceased exchanging dollars for gold in what became known as “The Nixon Shock”. Overnight, global money and credit became un-tethered to anything scarce. (The Man in the Moon is concerned only with understanding the value of money, not gold’s status as an economic, financial and political lightning rod.)

What followed from 1973 to 1982 in the West was a period of significant inflation coincident with economic stagnation (i.e., “stagflation”), a state of dis-equilibrium with which most global economists were unfamiliar. 1970s stagflation is now commonly blamed on two Middle East wars, in 1973 and 1979, which led the Organization of Oil Producing Exporters (OPEC) to embargo crude oil and drive its price higher. It is thought the embargo created higher prices coincident with an economic slowdown because consumption dropped without a commensurate and offsetting downward adjustment in oil prices.

Such macroeconomic analysis begins with the vagaries of geopolitics – the wars. Less blame is placed on what was then the new threat of a dramatically increasing stock of global currency – currency the OPEC cartel would have to accept in exchange for their relatively finite oil.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

George Soros Warns “No Exaggeration” That China-US On “Threshold Of World War 3”

May 22, 2015

George Soros Warns “No Exaggeration” That China-US On “Threshold Of World War 3”

While admitting that reaching agreement between the two countries will be difficult to achieve, George Soros –speaking at The World Bank’s Bretton Woods conference this week – warned that unless the U.S. makes ‘major concessions’ and allows China’s currency to join the IMF’s basket of currencies, “there is a real danger China will align itself with Russia politically and militarily, and then the threat of world war becomes real.”

Much in global geopolitics depends on the health and trajectory of the Chinese economy, was the undertone of George Soros’ comments as he spoke this week, but as MarketWatch reports,

Billionaire investor George Soros said flatly that he’s concerned about the possibility of another world war.

…

If China’s efforts to transition to a domestic-demand led economy from an export engine falter,there is a “likelihood” that China’s rulers would foster an external conflict to keep the country together and hold on to power.

…

To avoid this scenario, Soros called on the U.S. to make a “major concession” and allow China’s currency to join the International Monetary Fund’s basket of currencies. This would make the yuan a potential rival to the dollar as a global reserve currency.

In return, China would have to make similar major concessions to reform its economy, such as accepting the rule of law, Soros said.

Allowing China’s yuan to be a market currency would create “a binding connection” between the two systems.

An agreement along these lines will be difficult to achieve, Soros said, but the alternative is so unpleasant.

“Without it, there is a real danger that China will align itself with Russia politically and militarily, and then the threat of third world war becomes real, so it is worth trying.”

And while on the topic, Soros also spoke recently, as ValueWalk notes, on the situation in Europe…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

David Stockman Interview——-Kick-The-Can Economics Is Entering The End Game

May 18, 2015

David Stockman Interview——-Kick-The-Can Economics Is Entering The End Game

Today David Stockman, the man President Ronald Reagan called upon along with Dr. Paul Craig Roberts to help save the United States from disaster in 1981, warned King World News that we are now entering the “terminal phase” of the global financial system that will end in total collapse.

Eric King: “David, I wanted to get your thoughts on gold in the midst of this big deflation you think is in front of us. When you look at the collapse of 2008 – 2009, gold was one of the best performing asset classes. Gold went down but it went down much less relative to virtually everything else. Contrast that to 1973 – 1974, where we had a 47 percent stock market collapse. But during that time we had skyrocketing gold and silver. What’s in front of us because it looks like gold and silver may be ending a 4 year bear market and ready for a 1973 – 1974-style up-move?”

David Stockman: “Yes. I think the two periods are quite different. Although at the bottom it’s central bank errors that underlie each. But remember that in the 1970s we had just finally exited a semi-stable Bretton Woods Gold Exchange Standard system. There still was, at the end of the day, an anchor on the central banks that was thrown overboard by Nixon in 1971….

Continue reading the David Stockman interview below…

“So the first go-round was a rip-roaring price inflation because there had not yet been enough time under the fiat money and balance sheet expansion by the central banks to create excess capacity in the world industrial system. So as the boom in demand took off, commodity prices soared. That fed into domestic costs and labor wages in particular.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Richard Duncan: The Real Risk Of A Coming Multi-Decade Global Depression

April 6, 2015

Richard Duncan: The Real Risk Of A Coming Multi-Decade Global Depression

One that unwinds the past 50 years of globalization

Richard Duncan, author of The Dollar Crisis and The New Depression: The Breakdown Of The Paper Money Economy, isn’t mincing words about the risks he sees ahead for the world economy.

Essentially, he sees the past 50 years of economic prosperity fueled by globalization and easy credit in serious danger of being unwound, as the doomed monetary policies currently being pursued by the word’s central banks result in a massive multi-decade depression that spans the globe.

The first version of The Dollar Crisis, the hardback, came out in 2003, so I wrote it in 2002. And at that time, the dollar against gold was $300. So the dollar has lost more than 75% of its value since The Dollar Crisis was written, and I don’t think it’s going to stop here. I expect it to continue to lose value over the years and decades ahead.

But what we’re seeing is that the real theme of The Dollar Crisis was that the post-Bretton Woods international monetary system was fundamentally flawed because it couldn’t prevent trade imbalances between countries. And the US had developed an enormous trade deficit with the rest of the world and this blew the trade surplus countries like Japan and China into bubbles. And then, the dollars boomeranged back into the United States and blew it into a bubble, as well. I didn’t know when the housing bubble was going to pop in the US but I knew it would. And I wrote in The Dollar Crisis that when it did, we would have a severe global economic recession/depression that would involve a systemic banking sector crisis in the United States and necessitate trillion-dollar budget deficits and unorthodox monetary policy to prevent a Great Depression from occurring.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The “Deep State” Is Now in Charge

March 30, 2015

The “Deep State” Is Now in Charge

The Most Important Change

But when he is disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.

– Plato on tyrants, The Republic

This is the last in our series on how America’s money, economy and government have changed since the collapse of the Bretton Woods agreement and the end of gold-backed money.

Today, we keep the focus on government… and what it has become. The period is hardly coincidental: On August 15, 1971, President Nixon hammered the last nail in the coffin of honest money.

It was not the only reason for the profound changes that followed. There was also the opening up of Communist China to capitalism, the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of the Internet, to name just a few. But the new credit-based money system was the least obvious change… and probably the most important.

Caution: “Deep State” at Work

The credit-based dollar brought about a new economy. It changed the way people thought and the way their government operated. Now, deep pools of money determine which candidates are presented to voters.

And there is a new branch of government: the “Deep State.” It is not mentioned in the Constitution. And it operates above and beyond the visible process of democratic government.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

We Now Live in a “Pimpocracy”

March 29, 2015

We Now Live in a “Pimpocracy”

Shabby Immensity

Today, we continue mouth wide open … staggered by the shabby immensity of it … a tear forming in the corner of our eye.

Yes, we are looking at how the US economy, money and government have changed since President Nixon ended the gold-backed monetary system in 1971. It is not pretty.

We already know about the money. Since 1971, it’s been a credit-based, not a gold-based, system. The pre-1971 economy had three key characteristics:

1) It was healthy – Industry made things and sold them at a profit

2) It was fair – Financial progress was fairly evenly distributed.

3) It was solvent – The US was a creditor, not a debtor, nation.

cartoon_bushPimp_stockmarketHooker_472x373

Cartoon by David Horsey

baldwinPI_fig2 Change in global share of manufacturing output, selected countries (via Vox EU)

Platitudes and Hypocrisies

Americans still say they believe in free markets, democracy and financial rectitude. But only as platitudes and hypocrisies. America’s industries have largely been shipped over to China and other lower-cost producers in the emerging world.

That didn’t “just happen.” The Fed’s EZ money financed it. American consumers borrowed to spend more than they could afford. Walmart met their desires (if not their needs) with “Everyday Low Prices,” courtesy of low-paid Chinese workers.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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