Thursday, August 19, 2010

The "Flight to Safety" Trade Your Broker Won't Tell You About

By Graham Summers: Quietly and with little fanfare, Gold has made a MAJOR change in its status. The precious metal is largely viewed as THE anti-paper money play by investors. Given that the world's central banks (with perhaps the exception of China) have maintained only one response to every issues that arises in the markets (print or spend money) Gold should be soaring.

Indeed, EVERY single new bailout or stimulus or monetization should push Gold higher. In fact, we should be seeing a kind of gradual awakening for investors as they realize that each one of these bailouts brings us closer to the "end game" in which throwing money at the world's financial problems has failed......read on

How Much Gold Remains In Fort Knox?

By Chris Weber: Yesterday marked the 39th anniversary of the day when the US Government declared bankruptcy. Oh, they didn't call it that at the time. But what happened on August 15, 1971 was that the US defaulted on its promise to pay gold for dollars.

Before that day, gold was the legal linchpin of the world monetary system. Although every currency was defined in terms of the US dollar, the dollar itself was legally defined as 1/35th of a troy ounce of gold.

Since then, there really has been no center to the international monetary system. The "reserve currency" continues to be the US dollar. But there is no official definition of what a dollar is. Like every other currency, its value changes every ten seconds as it is traded on the global currency markets. It is a promise to pay nothing. Its value has been devalued for years. On top of that, enormous effort has since been put into the global currency markets: buying, selling, manipulating...none of which has caused anything productive to the world economy. Oh, sure, currency investing has made some of us rich, but is it really the same kind of wealth that, say, Steve Jobs has created with Apple?......read on

Lies, Manipulation And Deception

By Ian Gordan: Every official economic government statistic has been presented in the best possible light, in order to convince the public that things are better than they actually are. I am convinced that the officials who run the US government, at least from a financial and economic perspective, Larry Summers, Ben Bernanke, Tim Geithner et al, are presenting dishonest data in an effort to revive the US economy, which is at least 70% dependent upon the US consumer. These officials are trying to convince consumers that they will soon be able to resume the life that they were living, until 2007 brought them down with a dose of reality. That reality was debt doesn't make you rich; eventually, it leads you to the poorhouse, which is where many Americans are now, sadly, en route.....read in full

King Abdullah May Have Just Dodged Overthrow

From Business Insider: Did King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia narrowly avoid being overthrown by a close member of his own royal family? That seems to be a rumor circulating around some political and intelligence circles in Washington as well as in the Middle East. A Saudi official however denied the allegations saying it was most likely Iranian disinformation.

Indeed, there have been reports ¬- all unconfirmed -¬ that Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdel Aziz, a nephew of the king and former Saudi ambassador to Washington had attempted a coup and has since been under house arrest. Other sources said Bandar was detained in a Saudi prison. A Saudi official however told this reporter that the whole story was part of an Iranian disinformation campaign....read on