Gold and Silver Sell-Off a Nonevent-Rick Rule

 

Rick Rule, Chairman and founder of Sprott USA, says Cyprus is a stunning example of why people should store some wealth in precious metals. Rule contends, “If you were a Cypriot citizen and you had stored your wealth in gold and silver as opposed to having your money on deposit in a Cypriot bank, the Cypriot banking crisis, for you, would be interesting but not relevant.” If there is war [...]

In case it wasn’t obvious…

from Sovereign Man:

 

Sometimes the writing on the wall seems painfully obvious. But occasionally it’s a good idea to step back and look at the big picture:

The Land of the Free is set to impose fresh restrictions on firearm ownership… to include a ban on assault weapons, increased background checks, psychological screenings, and criminalizing ammunition magazine clips with a capacity beyond ten rounds.And if they can’t pass these measures by law, the President [...]

MAG: The video didn’t do it

It was bad enough, two years ago, that Defense Secretary Robert Gates called fringe Florida pastor Terry Jones to ask him not to burn copies of the Koran, or last week, that chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Martin Dempsey took his turn to call Jones to ask him to stop publicizing a YouTube video, The Innocence of Muslims. But then on Friday, White House spokesman Jay Carney told the [...]

This is going on all over the world: reviews and downgrades. I wonder how many AAA countries will be left within 5 years:

Fitch doubts Dutch AAA as property slump reaches ‘coma’
Fitch Ratings has issued the clearest warning to date that Holland faces losing its AAA rating if it fails to deliver austerity cuts or lets political conflict intrude on economic management.

“The Dutch are on the edge of a negative rating action,” said Chris Pryce, Fitch’s expert on the Netherlands. The first move is likely to be a switch from stable to negative [...]

Greed is good again on Wall Street: Banks TRIPLE their bonuses in bidding war over top brokers

The bonuses can reach $15million for some teams over the course of years
The bidding war has reached its highest level since the financial crisis hit the U.S.
Brokers are offered two to three times the commissions and feed they made in the previous year

Bonuses offered by the U.S.’s biggest securities companies to recruit top brokers are reaching their loftiest levels since the financial crisis, and none of the big firms are [...]

Jim Sinclair – The Gold Panic & What to Expect in 2012

kingworldnews.com 

With escalating fears from gold and silver investors around the world, including professionals, today King World News interviewed legendary Jim Sinclair.  When KWN asked if he has ever seen this kind of fear and panic in the gold market, Sinclair responded, “Not in the first gold market (1970s), not in the gold market we are in now, not in the correction (in ’08 & ’09), which took us down after the [...]

Where Is This Market Headed?

by MacroStory.com

Where Is This Market Headed?

“He observed that human emotions collectively had major impacts on the movement of stock prices and Markets in general, ultimately creating patterns that kept repeating.” – From a book on Jesse Livermore’s trading style.

Markets at major inflection points are more a function of investor psychology and less technicals and or macro data. The struggle between [...]

The First Stage of Inflation Has Already Hit, Next Up Is the Currency Collapse

by Phoenix Capital Research

One of the biggest misconceptions about inflation is that the US Dollar needs to collapse in order for inflation to occur. While a currency collapse often accompanies periods of heightened inflation, this is not necessarily true.

Case in point, the US Dollar actually rallied this year despite commodity prices exploding higher:

Asset
Price on 1/1/10
Price today
% Change

US Dollar Index
77.5
79.29
+2%

Oil
82.75
88.86
+7%

Gold
1,137
1,392
+22%

Silver
16.81
29.44
+75%

Wheat*
201
274
+36%

Corn*
167
236
+41%

Poultry**
83
85
+2%

Sugar **
21
28
+33%

* per metric ton

** cents per pound

As you can [...]

The housing “food chain” has died.

In a “normal” market, when someone buys their first home, unless they buy it from a builder they buy it from someone who uses the proceeds to buy their first “move-up” home from a seller who uses the proceeds to buy their second move-up home, etc. It is a food chain that starts with the small fish — the first time buyer. That’s the segment of the market that [...]