Saturday, October 15, 2016
The Gold Manipulators Not Only Will Be Punished, They Have Been Punished / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2016
I have not gone off the deep end and joined the “community” of boosters, promoters, pompom waving cheering squads and general cult figures who you can just tell not only want you to adore gold, but in some cases need you to act on your adoration and buy gold or gold stocks. Read into that what you will, but the history of investors burned by the pitch, which tugs at peoples’ morals, sense of right and wrong and plain old common sense, is a long and storied one.
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Saturday, October 15, 2016
Gold is Oversold on Misplaced Expectations of a 2016 Rate Hike / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2016
Gold investors know that the metal has been under pressure due to expectations of a FED rate hike in 2016. Many believe that an increase in the FED funds rate would support the dollar and send prices for precious metals lower. This has been a key driver of the decline in the gold price to support at $1,250, the 200-day moving average.
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Saturday, October 15, 2016
Gold Stocks Corrections in Bull Markets / Commodities / Gold and Silver Stocks 2016
The gold stocks are clearly in correction mode. The large caps (HUI, GDX) have corrected 30% while the juniors (GDXJ) have held up well in comparison by correcting the same amount. Given a number of factors (the size of the previous advance, the recent technical damage, stronger US$ index and rising yields) the gold stocks should continue to correct and consolidate in a larger sense. To gauge a potential path forward we present a new analog chart and compare the current correction to those from past markets.
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Saturday, October 15, 2016
Pushing Politics to Extract Payments / ElectionOracle / US Presidential Election 2016
My wife, Rosemary, a registered Republican, received a black and white poll in the mail. Plastered across the top of the sheet in bold black letters was the title: “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.” I wonder who that could be.
On to the questions. All she had to do was to check the appropriate box and return the ballot. The survey indicated name, survey number, and a processing code, all with a bar code for identification. She just had to check the appropriate box beneath a picture of Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, or “no opinion.” Seemed simple enough.
Saturday, October 15, 2016
Trump is Wrong on Trade / ElectionOracle / US Presidential Election 2016
Trumps claims (see here) that America has lost high paying manufacturing jobs to China because the communist country promotes its exports through subsidies, tax advantages and currency manipulations. The reality is that we should not care what China does. The more China subsidizes its industries, the more its trading partners gain in the abundance of cheap goods and services and, contrary to what Trump believes, in the creation of high-paying jobs. In an exchange economy, there is a natural antagonism between producers and consumers. Producers benefit from scarcity, consumers from abundance. A producer wants to be the only store on a block selling a limited number of products for a limited period of time. Consumers, on the other hand, want abundance with more producers and products available over a longer period of time. This conflict arises naturally in an exchange economy. Robinson Crusoe hunting for himself will clearly prefer abundance to scarcity.
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Saturday, October 15, 2016
Black Votes Matter - Is the US on the Verge of Mass Race Riots? / ElectionOracle / US Presidential Election 2016
Dear Reader,
Thanks to a philosophy course my daughter is currently taking, I have recently become more intimately acquainted with the British philosopher John Locke (1632-1704).
While Locke is famous for many other truly important ideas, our recent reacquaintance began after I reviewed an essay on Locke’s theory on the primary versus secondary qualities of things, a bit of a brain teaser.
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Friday, October 14, 2016
(Interview) Trading with Elliott Waves Doesn't Have to Be Complicated / InvestorEducation / Elliott Wave Theory
Start simple, with the basic 5 "core" Elliot wave chart patterns
Jeffrey Kennedy, a recognized expert in Elliott wave analysis and forecasting, explains why the Wave Principle is such a reliable and powerful way to forecast the financial markets.
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Friday, October 14, 2016
Gold Stocks Screaming Buy / Commodities / Gold and Silver Stocks 2016
The gold miners’ stocks are suffering from universal and overwhelming bearishness today, with nearly everyone expecting further selling. That’s the natural reaction following this sector’s recent massive correction, which climaxed in one of its biggest daily plummets ever witnessed. But within bull markets, there’s no better time to buy aggressively than deep in a major selloff that’s riddled with great doubt and fear.
The core mission of speculation and investment is so simple even children can easily grasp it, buy low sell high. The great challenges arise not from understanding, but execution. Actually buying low then selling high in real markets is exceedingly unnatural and uncomfortable. It requires traders to overcome their own greed and fear to do the exact opposite of everything their own instincts are screaming to do.
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Friday, October 14, 2016
Brace Yourself for the Quadrillion-Dollar Reckoning / Stock-Markets / Global Debt Crisis 2016
The ever more extreme antics of our central bankers keep forcing us to find new ways to describe them. My good friend Danielle DiMartino Booth does this by drawing an interesting historical parallel.
Danielle takes us back to the 20th-century era of World Wars and draws upon Liaquat Ahamed’s. The Lords of Finance. His work was inspired by that 1999 Time magazine cover story “The Committee to Save the World.” You may recall it: the lovely mugs of Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin, and Larry Summers up there, grinning like the Cheshire Cat.
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Friday, October 14, 2016
The Next Recession Will Blow Out the Budget / Economics / Recession 2018
The odds that the next US President will face a recession during his or her first four years in office are quite high. Maybe not in the first year, but it’s highly unlikely he or she will get more than two to three years without one.
Given this fiscal reality and the dwindling number of arrows left in the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy quiver, the administration will have a hard time dealing with the fallout from a recession.
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Friday, October 14, 2016
John Mauldin: My Infrastructure Plan to Save the US Economy / Stock-Markets / Infrastructure
Infrastructure. Most people think of roads and bridges when they hear the term. But we really should think of infrastructure as the things that allow us to move food, energy, water, products, people, and information.
It’s our rail and trucking systems. It’s our electric grid. It’s our telephone system, Internet, and other information systems. To some degree, it’s our school systems. It’s the things that make it possible for businesses and governments to provide the services and goods we all expect.
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Friday, October 14, 2016
“Gold Is A Great Hedge Against Politicians” – Goldman Sachs / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2016
Gold has risen another 1.7% in British pound terms this week and is 1.8% higher in euro terms and is again acting as a hedge against currency devaluations, Brexit, eurozone and heightened political and geo-political risk in the UK, EU, U.S. and most of the world.
Gold is marginally higher in dollar terms this week after surging on the open in Asia on Sunday night. Gold quickly rose 1% from $1,251/oz to $1,264/oz as China and the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE) began trading again after being closed for the Chinese Golden Week.
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Friday, October 14, 2016
How Could Helicopter Money Affect the Gold Market? / Commodities / Gold and Silver 2016
Since the NIRP has not yielded the expected results – it could have actually weakened the condition of the banking sector and its ability to expand lending – a hot debate about the use of another weapon in the central banks’ heroic struggle with the deflationary pressure started. We mean of course helicopter money, also called monetary finance or money-financed fiscal programs. Supporters argue that it is a necessary option to revive economic growth and generate inflation, while opponents consider it a fancy name for printing money and monetizing fiscal deficits. Who is right and what does it imply for the gold market?
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Friday, October 14, 2016
World War III On The Brink: War Will Continue Until It Triggers Economic Collapse / Politics / Economic Collapse
One of the main Shemitah Trends of late 2016 is the emerging war in the Middle East. It has every indication of turning into a conflict resembling World War III and day-by-day is becoming more dangerous and extreme.
This could be the war that finally triggers the great economic collapse being planned. Certainly, the storm clouds of war are gathering, as we’ve been covering.
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Friday, October 14, 2016
America's 50-Pound Ball and Chain / Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2016
America's economic condition is truly a "tale of two cities." Upper middle class and wealthy earners have never been more flush thanks in large part to the record liquidity creation of the last eight years as well as to their financial market exposure.
By contrast, the middle and lower classes have either stagnated or are struggling as perhaps never before, due in part to their under-exposure to the financial market but also to the erosion of their real estate wealth in the last 10 years.
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Friday, October 14, 2016
Could Nigeria Become Africa’s Offshore China RMB Hub? / Currencies / China Currency Yuan
On October 1, the Chinese renminbi officially joins becomes the fifth international reserve currency. Over time, Nigeria stands to benefit from RMB’s rising international role.On October 1, 2016, the Chinese renminbi (RMB) will officially join the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) international reserve assets; that is, the SDR (Special Drawing Rights) basket. From the perspective of the IMF, this is recognition of China’s success in opening up its markets.
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Friday, October 14, 2016
US 2016 Presidential Election: Will US-China Relations Change / ElectionOracle / US Presidential Election 2016
After one of the most degrading races in postwar history, US presidential campaigns are getting still dirtier. But will US-China relations change?As Wikileaks has disclosed information about Hillary Clinton’s email and Benghazi scandals and deep ties with Wall Street, her campaign, with its cozy media relations, is promoting Donald Trump’s obscene tapes and comments on women.
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Friday, October 14, 2016
US T-Bill Rejection At Ports In Progress / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
World trade has fallen for the second quarter in a row. The decade of stagnation of industrial production in the United States, Japan, and European Union can be blamed on financial engineering, housing bubbles, war, and recently on destructive monetary policy in QE bond purchase program. It is not stimulus, but rather a destroyer of capital. The West contains several nations with heavy industrial emphasis, hardly advanced economies anymore. They risk a fall into the Third World from a generation of outsourcing, asset bubbles, and financial fraud, as soon as the new currency regime is installed as part of the financial RESET.
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Friday, October 14, 2016
Our Current Keynesian Nightmare / Interest-Rates / US Debt
It is not an understatement to say that the economic policy of the United States since 2008 has been purely Keynesian. Interest rates are near zero and the national debt stands at nearly $20 trillion. This is a direct result of applying the policy prescription recommended in Keynes’ General Theory. One day, his book will likely sit next to Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto as works that generated dangerously false notions of reality with disastrous consequences.
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Friday, October 14, 2016
These 2 Debt Instruments Pose Peril to Millions of Investors / Interest-Rates / US Bonds
A billionaire says the search for yield is overriding credit judgment
In a world of low and even negative rates, bond investors are so hungry for yield they're willing to accept high levels of risk.
For example, bond investors are increasingly embracing debt instruments known as covenant lite loans, which provide minimal protection should the issuer get into financial trouble.
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