Coming Soon To A Theatre Near You

By Captain Hook, Treasure Chests

Make no mistake about it, what is happening in Greece and Thailand right now will be coming soon to a theatre near you as well, with a war between our bloated bureaucracy and the public at center. It’s important to understand that the weaker periphery states in the Western alliance is just the beginning in a global affair, as Martin Armstrong points out in his latest, and that while being ‘big daddy’ of the sovereign debt debacle will postpone crisis in the US briefly as capital seeks safety in her markets, once this reaction is exhausted the U$$ Titanic America will be going down too. Therein, after the panic into US bonds (and stocks as a result of artificially lower rates) is done, rates will rise in the States as well, forcing the same budget cuts and austerity measures now being imposed on what is being described by the Western media sources (in justifying trading action) as the economic basket case, better known as Europe.

Of course upon closer inspection of just who’s who in terms of economic basket cases in the world as measured by the deficits a country is running, it might surprise some (people who live in a vacuum) that the idiot child Obama has the US right up near the top in this regard, meaning once the panic money runs out for Treasuries, rates will go through the roof overnight here too. This is naturally why we school getting out of debt as soon as possible, as when this trend begins, it will be both relentless and merciless, and in the end reveal the insolvency of America as well. It’s only a matter of time in this regard. And again, it’s coming to a theatre near you soon – to the stock exchanges, banks, and larger economy – so be prepared. Pay off your debts. Don’t keep much money in the banks. Get stock certificates for precious metals shares you intend to keep. And buy as much gold and silver bullion as you can safely store. (i.e. in physical and allocated accounts.)

With all this it’s difficult believing in Martin Armstrong’s call for new highs in stocks before a more severe collapse comes, however as you would know in reading these pages for sometime, if sentiment conditions remain favorable (bearish), anything is possible in our faulty and fraudulent markets. All we need is for US index open interest put / call ratios to begin trending higher and stocks would begin to rise as they are squeezed by liquidity and buying spurred by our price managing bureaucracy. Remember, it’s there job to deceive the public in furthering their own interests (so they can tax you to death), and they will perform this function in borg like fashion until they ruin the economy long-term. This of course has now occurred, which is why they must work harder at it, but are still failing.

The European Union’s recent attempts to revive the euro is perhaps the best example of this we have had in some time, where after bailout measures to stabilize the PIGS failed to stabilize markets, along with yesterday’s short selling ban, it’s now anticipated a currency intervention will be announced prior to the weekend to goose the currency, bonds, and stocks higher in an effort to avoid a complete loss of confidence from developing. And the threat of currency intervention has been working into options expiry this week, as can be seen here, however one does need to wonder how long this will last once bearish euro speculators are squeezed out and / or options expire. And the same holds true for stocks in the States. Again, if the downtrends in US index open interest put / call ratios persist, which are updated here, while a bounce may arise, it’s difficult see stocks getting much traction here all things considered.

Side note: Remember, open interest put / call ratios are more important and can trend counter to those that simply measure volume, as positions are held overnight, making them a far stronger indication of true sentiment. What’s more, not many traders / speculators are either aware and / or appreciate their importance in gauging sentiment today, which is why they still work while most other indicators have become redundant.

Further to this, because of the present open interest configuration that has good put option related support for the S&P 500 (SPX) at 1100, which can be seen here in the May SPY option series, further price declines might not be possible until next week. It should be remembered however this might be exactly what the doctor ordered in terms of further tracing a potentially developing head and shoulders pattern in the trade, which can be seen below in the attached chart of the Dow. In terms of putting the larger picture together right now, you will remember from our last meeting the Dow / TSX (TSE) Ratio is possibly in the throws of triggering a monthly breakout above the 21-month exponential moving average (EMA), which Dr. Copper (a strong leading indicator) is suggesting will happen with its recent collapse. (See Figure 1)

This is of course suggestive that despite the best laid plans on the part of the bureaucracy, that underneath it all, what’s really happening is the economy is crashing again, led by round two of a real estate credit related collapse. What’s more, as you can see in the attached data it’s happening in real time, which when coupled with the likelihood bearish speculators are now exhausted on an intermediate-term basis, brings the curious mind to the conclusion stocks could be heading lower here, perhaps substantially lower. How much lower is substantially lower? Well, if the larger degree head and shoulders pattern in the Dow pictured below traces out, as you can see the ‘crash zone’ target is between 3,000 and 4,000, which is where one should expect to see the Dow / Gold Ratio (pictured in Figure 1) hitting a ratio of 1. Please note that in both Figures 1 and 2 the time lines are suggesting a turn lower is due right now as well. (See Figure 2)

Unfortunately we cannot carry on past this point, as the remainder of this analysis is reserved for our subscribers. Of course if the above is the kind of analysis you are looking for this is easily remedied by visiting our to discover more about how our service can help you in not only this regard, but also in achieving your financial goals. As you will find, our recently reconstructed site includes such improvements as automated subscriptions, improvements to trend identifying / professionally annotated charts, to the more detailed quote pages exclusively designed for independent investors who like to stay on top of things. Here, in addition to improving our advisory service, our aim is to also provide a resource center, one where you have access to well presented ‘key’ information concerning the markets we cover.

And if you are interested in finding out more about how our advisory service would have kept you on the right side of the equity and precious metals markets these past years, please take some time to review a publicly available and extensive archive located here, where you will find our track record speaks for itself.

Naturally if you have any questions, comments, or criticisms regarding the above, please feel free to drop us a line. We very much enjoy hearing from you on these matters.

Good investing all.

Captain Hook

The following is commentary that originally appeared at for the benefit of subscribers on Thursday, May 20^th, 2010.

Copyright © 2010 treasurechests.info Inc. All rights reserved.

Treasure Chests is a market timing service specializing in value-based position trading in the precious metals and equity markets with an orientation geared to identifying intermediate-term swing trading opportunities. Specific opportunities are identified utilizing a combination of fundamental, technical, and inter-market analysis. This style of investing has proven very successful for wealthy and sophisticated investors, as it reduces risk and enhances returns when the methodology is applied effectively. Those interested in discovering more about how the strategies described above can enhance your wealth should visit our web site at .

Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilizing methods believed reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any trading losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Comments within the text should not be construed as specific recommendations to buy or sell securities. Individuals should consult with their broker and personal financial advisors before engaging in any trading activities. We are not registered brokers or advisors. Certain statements included herein may constitute “forward-looking statements” with the meaning of certain securities legislative measures. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the above mentioned companies, and / or industry results, to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Do your own due diligence.

GOLD AND THE BUDGET DEFICIT

By Howard S. Katz, The Gold Speculator

All gold bugs have fond memories of the year 1979.  In that year, the price of gold rose from $250/oz. to $600/oz.  The reason was not hard to find.  Prices in the U.S. that year rose by 13.3%.  The newspapers were screaming, “Double Digit Inflation.”  Gold was going up sometimes as much as $50 per day.

This was solid confirmation of what everyone knew.  Gold goes up when prices are on the rise.  Of course, the gold bugs of 1979 overdid things a bit.  They more than tripled its price between Jan. 1, 1979 and Jan. 21, 1980 while the general price level only went up 13%.  But it certainly did make the point.  And this tells us that, if there is another panic about prices in this country, the price of gold will take a trip to the moon.

All this is apropos of Obama’s 10 year projection for the budget (2010-2020).  It is something not to be believed.  First, let us look at budget deficits for the previous 10 years (2000-2009)

It is hard to remember, but 10 years ago the U.S. had a budget surplus.  Bill Clinton told his staff, “We are Eisenhower Republicans, and we are balancing the budget.”  Bush spent money like a drunken sailor.  And Obama is simply not to be believed.  The period 2010-2020 shows a deficit starting at $1.5 trillion and then estimates it at about an average of 1 trillion per year.

Of course, budget projections tell us a lot more about the image the Administration wants to present than about reality.  What Obama is saying (by his actions) is that he does not care about what is going on in this country and expects that he can lie his way out of any problem.

The importance of this for the price of gold lies in the fact that any deficit of any size in any democratic country

This began in 1693 in England.  England became a democracy in 1688 with the Glorious Revolution.  A good, new king (William and Mary), who would cede power to Parliament, was brought in to replace the bad, old king.  The new king had been a Dutch prince who was fighting a war with the French.  Beyond his war he did not care terribly much about running the country.  All England supported his French war.  Parliament ran the country, and the King fought the French.

Then the war took an unfortunate turn for the worse.  The King needed more troops and equipment.  He went to Parliament and said, “Give me a tax increase to fight the war.”

Hey, this was no fun.  The people loved the new king.  The people loved to fight the French.  But the people did not love to pay taxes.  Parliament voted down the tax increase.

What to do?  The King wanted the money.  The Parliament did not want to give the money.  Stalemate.

Then along came a man named William Patterson and said, “I will lend the money to the King.”  Patterson gathered some friends together who put up £72,000.  However, the King needed, not £72,000 but £1,200,000, 16 2/3 times as much.  What to do?

“No problem,” said Mr. Patterson.  “I will issue bank notes [pieces of paper saying they were redeemable in gold] for £1,200,000 and lend that to the King.”  The King said, “Hurray.”  The Parliament said, “Hurray.”  And Mr. Patterson said, “Hurray, hurray, hurray.”

Unfortunately, Patterson had promised to redeem all £1,200,000 of his notes for gold, and he had less than 1/16 of the money needed to do so.  He could keep his promise only if people did not ask him to do so.  Soon people came to Mr. Patterson (who had ostentatiously named himself and friends the Bank of England) and asked him to redeem his notes in gold.  Patterson could not pay.

Faced with a crisis, Parliament and the King had to bail Patterson out.  They declared Patterson’s notes to be money just as valuable as the gold which the notes had promised.

And that is the story of every democracy since that time.  When the Government ran an unusual deficit, the legislature was afraid to tax the people.  So it allowed a central bank to create money out of nothing and lend this to the Government.  In the pre-democratic period, when the people were ruled by kings, whenever the king wanted money, he just took it.  The way that England became a democracy was that they got fed up with this system, and they killed the (old, bad) king.  From then on the king needed the consent of the legislature (elected from the people) to take their money.

So the system of central banking and paper money invented by William Patterson was an end-run around democracy.  It was a way for the government to get wealth from the people without the consent of their elected representatives.  It was a way to defeat the principle of no taxation without representation.  The government would print money (or empower a central bank to print money) and would then seize the people’s wealth in the same manner as a counterfeiter.  Counterfeiters, as you know, do not steal money.  They make the entire community poorer, not by stealing its money, but by using their newly printed money to buy up most of the wealth of the community and take possession of it for themselves.  This is the policy which the New Deal introduced in 1933 when it said that its program was to rob and when it gave the power to create money to the commercial bankers in conjunction with the central bank.  From 1933 to 2009, U.S. money fell to 1/17 of its original value.

It is this basic program of robbing from the people which Obama has now put into high gear.  His projected budget deficits for 2010-2020 average about a trillion dollars a year.  As was the case with William and Mary and every occasion since, paper money is used as an end run around the people’s refusal to vote the funds which the government wants.

A good example of this is the War of 1812 in the U.S.  The pro-war party only secured enough votes by assuring the country that taxes would not be necessary.  And the money for the war was raised by loans from the nation’s private banks, who printed up bank notes for the purpose.  Then, when the British burned Washington in 1814, the holders of bank notes of these private banks ran to their banks and demanded gold and silver.  The banks could not pay.  (Of course, when you cannot pay the bank what you have promised, you are in deep trouble.  But the banks had the government on their side and thus were allowed to continue in business without paying their obligations.)  Senator Daniel Webster declared at this time that Washington, D.C. bank notes had declined in value to 75¢ while Boston bank notes were still at $1.00.  This is because the Washington banks had printed money and lent heavily to the Government.  But Boston was anti-war, and the banks there refused to lend to the Government.

With their bank notes depreciating in value, the banks realized that they could no longer lend to the Government.  What was the result?  By February 1815, there was peace.

With the above as background, let us address the question of just how much money Obama will be printing over the next few years.  The estimated deficit for this year is $1.5 trillion.  It gets smaller as we go further out.  However, this is usually an attempt to manipulate public opinion.  In almost all cases, the actual deficits turn out to be worse than the estimates.  Let us assume an average deficit of $1 trillion each year for the period 2010-2014.  This would mean the creation of $5 trillion dollars out of nothing.

The raises the question, what is the current U.S. money supply and how does the coming $5 trillion compare with it?  In years past, that would have been an easy question to answer.  Economists have known what money is for a long time.  It is that economic good which is used to buy things.  If you can buy typical goods which are for sale in our society with it, then it is money, and since its founding the Federal Reserve System has published data on the U.S. money supply.  However, a few years ago the Fed changed its method of computing money.  Certain demand deposits (which have always been counted as money) were reclassified as time deposits (which are not money).  The owners of these deposits were told that they were still demand deposits, but the public was told they were time deposits.  That is, the Fed has been caught red handed.  However, they will probably rely on their ace in the hole to get away with it.  When the Fed was created, the original gang around Paul Warburg and J.P. Morgan knew that they would have to make things as complicated as possible.  Money is a very simple subject.  Above I defined money as that economic good which is used to buy things.  But modern “economists” will tell you that there are 13 different moneys (M-1…..M-13).

In an honest money system, the basic unit will be a physical quantity of some monetary metal, such as silver or gold.  You have undoubtedly heard of the pound sterling.  That is because a few centuries ago British money was a pound of sterling silver.  Under the U.S. gold standard act of 1900, a dollar was defined in law as 25.9 grains of gold (about 1/20 oz.), 9/10 fine.  When you exchanged money for an economic good, you gave a physical quantity of gold or silver for the good.  No problem, no complications – and the money system which led to the greatest wealth the world has ever known.

Back in mid-2008, before the Fed began seriously lying about the money supply, it reported the money supply as $1.4 trillion.  From that time to today, the monetary base has more than doubled, (from $0.9 trillion to $2 trillion).  Prior to mid-2008, the monetary base had never been above the money supply.  Indeed, since the monetary base is high-powered money, i.e., that money which is used to create additional money, it is impossible for the base to exceed the total money supply.  So when the Fed reports that it does, it has to be lying.

Assume that the true money supply has more than doubled since mid-2008 along with the monetary base.  That would put it at about 3 trillion today.  If Obama increases it by another $5 trillion by monetizing deficits, as above, over the coming 5 years, then the U.S. money supply will multiply by a factor of 2 2/3.  Since Obama is too busy making pretty speeches on the theme of it’s not my fault, he will not have time to create any additional economic goods.  Therefore, the 2 2/3-fold increase in money will have to lead to a 2 2/3-fold increase in prices.  A gallon of gas will cost close to $8.  A cup of coffee will cost over $3.00.  Perhaps we will have a national median home price of $500,000 (new homes).

With this idea in mind would it be surprising to see a price of gold at #3,000 to $3,500?  Of course, for precise predictions it is better to use technical considerations.  The fundamentals give us the basic why.  The technicals give us confirmation and more precise timing.

Alas, dear reader, you live in an evil age.  America’s Founding Fathers were great men.  They put America on a gold standard and made her rich.  But the leaders of the early-to-mid-20^th century were liars and frauds.  They are a group of counterfeiters who rob from the poor to give to the rich.  Are you going to listen to them or their minions telling you to buy stocks?  Or are you going to listen to me and my fellow gold bugs telling you to buy gold?  Your life, your choice.  To discuss this issue in more detail, I publish a fortnightly economic letter, The One-handed Economist ($300 per year) analyzing the various financial markets (mostly gold) and telling you what is likely to happen and what actions to take. You may subscribe via Pay Pal by visiting my web site, www.thegoldspeculator.com and pressing the Pay Pal button ($300), or you may subscribe by sending a check in the mail for $290 ($10 cash discount) to: The One-handed Economist, 614 Nashua St. #122, Milford, N.H. 03055.    OHE is written every two weeks on Friday and posted (password protected) on my web site the next day.  Thank you for your interest.

# # #

Facebook Hottie Has a Dark Side

By Rick Ackerman, Rick’s Picks

Quite the hottie, isn’t she?  That’s “Rita Wilson” pictured below, and we didn’t think twice about adding her as a Facebook friend when she sent us a request a while back. We figured we’d find out later who she was, but we were wrong. She doesn’t answer e-mail queries, and Googling the name brings up only the actress Rita Wilson who is married to Tom Hanks.  This Rita Wilson’s Facebook biography says she lives in San Francisco. Because we lived there ourselves for more than 20 years, we thought that maybe there was a connection through some mutual friend or acquaintance.  Alas, as far as we’ve been able to determine, Rita Wilson doesn’t exist in the flesh.  Rather, she appears to have been concocted by some PR firm tasked with hyping the shares of publically traded companies.

This wasn’t so obvious to us at first, since Rita’s long list of Facebook friends comprises actual people from all over the world – people with eclectic interests and quirky things to say.  There’s Claire Louise Hay, for one, who wonders why her fish have been going haywire:  “Why [do] my barb fish have such a life-defeating reaction to stress? When startled, they leap out of the water, usually hitting the lid, but sometimes hitting the kitchen surface or the floor. It’s a wonder they’re not extinct.”  This is not the kind of stuff you can make up, even if Rita Wilson is.

Rita’s Corporate ‘Likes’

As the weeks went by, however, the ever-expanding list of “Likes and Interests” linked from Rita’s Facebook page began to look more and more like the client list of a public relations firm. Many of the companies are based in China, mainly in energy and resource-related businesses, but there are also some American firms, including Dreamworks and a Los Angeles Chevy dealer. The list has been growing by the week, so one can only surmise that Rita has been producing results for her clients.  She even knows to flash a “Stop Your Tinnitus” ad at us when we visit her Facebook page. The condition has plagued us for years, but it’s a little creepy to think that Rita somehow knew about this.

Lately, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has come under fire for trashing members’ privacy online. Amidst all of the controversy, the point appears to have been lost that Facebook exists solely to collect information on all of us that it can peddle to advertisers and retailers. With the emergence of Rita Wilson, however, and who-knows-how-many other cyberagents like her to siphon up consumer data, the insidiousness of Zuckerberg’s business model has been laid bare. It seems likely that he will be forced to retreat all the way on this issue. It should be interesting to see whether Facebook can survive if the company is unable to fulfill its primary mission of finding out all that can possibly be known about its members’ shopping habits.  (Update:  I awoke Monday morning to discover that I had been de-Friended by “Rita”.)

(If you’d like to have Rick’s Picks commentary delivered free each day to your e-mail box, click here.)

Rick’s Picks is a trading newsletter for stock, gold, silver and mini-indexes. All trades are based on the proprietary Hidden Pivot technical analysis method.

© Rick Ackerman and www.rickackerman.com, 2010. |
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Bernanke Fiddles While U.S. Burns

By Jeff Nielson, Bullion Bulls Canada

In 64 AD, the Great Fire of Rome occurred. It lasted for five days, and roughly half the city was seriously damaged or destroyed. This event took place during the rule of Emperor Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, more commonly known as “Nero”.

There are serious doubts that Nero actually “fiddled” while Rome burned, particularly given the fact that the fiddle wouldn’t be invented for another thousand years. Instead, his historical infamy appears to be mainly the product of his extravagant spending which threatened to bankrupt the Empire, combined with the ruthless persecution (and execution) of his enemies. He was also apparently prone to spreading rumors and propaganda among the citizenry, to cover-up his misdeeds and maintain his popularity.

Given the metaphor implied by the title, I’m sure there are many readers who believe it should have read “Obama fiddles” or “Democrats fiddle”. Rest assured there is no error here. Barack Obama is only the President of the United States. The Democrats merely control the White House, and the two legislative chambers. Meanwhile, Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve control the money supply of the U.S.

The United States has an economy which is both saturated with debt, and dependent on ever-increasing injections of new debt in order to function – in other words it is a debt-addict. Given that every new U.S. dollar which is “printed” can only be created through inventing new debt (ever since the U.S. abandoned the “gold standard”), this makes Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve the originator of most U.S. government debt, and thus the “pusher” for this junkie-economy.

In pursuing the analogy of the Federal Reserve as drug-pusher, we must remember there are three ways in which the “pusher” exploits (and ultimately destroys) the addict. It is the pusher who first gets the addict “hooked”, and then continues to supply the debilitating drug. It is the pusher who makes enormous profits off of this dependency. And it is the pusher who assures the addict that everything is fine, even as the addict’s life spirals out of control. It is only when we understand the junkie-pusher relationship that we can understand the inherently malicious and parasitic nature of the Federal Reserve.

Given that the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, it took a relatively long time for the Fed to get the U.S. hooked on debt, as the graph below illustrates. However, now that the addiction has clearly taken hold, Bernanke (and the rest of the private bankers who own and operate the Federal Reserve) have created such a lethal addiction that a fatal debt-overdose (i.e. a default) is now the only possible outcome.

 

More articles from Bullion Bulls Canada….

Guarding Your Money from Government Onslaughts

By The Mogambo Guru

Grandfather-economic-report.com is famous for presenting whole constellations, in graphic form, of horrors about the mess that fiat money and government, in the hands of incompetent do-gooders, has allowed.

He writes that, in 2009, people worked, “3 times longer per year to pay all taxes more than they pay for food, housing and clothing combined.” Yikes!

This is where I learned that the combined onslaught of government (from local corruption to Congressional corruption) consumes half of all income in the USA!

And this grasping, gobbling government colossus spends half of GDP, which to this day – to this day! – makes me have nightmares full of every post-apocalyptic horror movie I ever saw, pervasive darkness and gloom, dripping in despair and suffering, where government goons and killer robots relentlessly track down “undesirable” citizens, who, you gotta admit, are always the best looking men and the hottest hubba-hubba women of the whole bunch, which gives rise to the lesson that if you have to go down, these are the people to be with until then!

Of course, there are many lessons in these movies beyond this timeless philosophical gem, such as not trusting anybody because they are probably aliens from outer space or government killer goons. Or both.

Anyway, I thought I had made peace with myself about our system of governments consuming half of everything, but I entered a whole new land of fear and loathing (as Hunter Thompson might have termed it), when Grandfather goes on, “Increased government (at all levels) not only consumes national income by its spending, but their employees continually issue new regulations aimed at the reduced private sector, with the cost of compliance passed to the private sector as un-funded mandates to the tune of 15% of national income.”

By this time you are hardly paying attention, and are saying to yourself “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tell me something new” in a kind of bored, I’ve-seen-it-all, “we’re screwed” ennui, but without yawning.

I was the same way! So, like you, I was not ready for him going on to say “Adding this 15% to the 49% spending ratio increases government’s control-share of the economy to 64%”, which bring our taxpayer’s share of income down to 36%.” Wow! The government consumes two-thirds of my income!

And so we learn that in 2009, people worked, “3 times longer per year to pay all taxes, more than they pay for food, housing and clothing combined” when, in reality, the taxpayer is left with much, much, much less than that paltry estimate of 36% of gross income, and everyone is getting lesser and lesser, too, since taxes are rising and there is talk of, and the certainty of, new taxes, while inflation (which has the same effect as a tax) is rising and rising, and destined to rise some more, and then more and more until the very life is being crushed out of you by inflation in prices, which will happen because inflation in prices is caused by inflation in the money supply, which is caused by the monstrous Federal Reserve creating the extra money, which it does so that the despicable federal government can borrow and spend the extra money, which drives up the proportion of the economy that the government consumes, making it all worse and worse in a big, ugly spiral, spinning around and around, spinning, spinning, spinning until you are so dizzy that you are think you are going to throw up, and then you realize that you are not puking your guts out because of vertigo, but because the government has destroyed the country!

Of course, there is much, much more at grandfather-economic-report.com, and there are graphs of gold and gold-related things, too, making you come away both dazed and scared out of your freaking mind, but with the idea floating around in your mind that “Hey! Maybe that Horse’s Butt Mogambo (HBM) was right about that buying gold thing that he was always yammering on about! And it looks like he may be right about silver and oil, too! How could such an idiot be right about anything, much less three things?”

How? The answer is that the Austrian school of economics – found free at Mises.org – makes it easy! So easy, in fact, that it makes you squirm in delight and exclaim, “Whee! This investing stuff is easy!”

The Mogambo Guru
for The Daily Reckoning

Guarding Your Money from Government Onslaughts originally appeared in the Daily Reckoning. The Daily Reckoning, offers a uniquely refreshing, perspective on the global economy, investing, gold, stocks and today’s markets. Its been called “the most entertaining read of the day.”

Austria 2010 50€ Gold Coin Commemorates Physician Clemens von Pirquet

The commemorative series in gold "Celebrated Physicians of Austria" concludes with a coin for the renowned Viennese doctor, Clemens von Pirquet (1874-1929).

Clemens von Pirquet was born in 1874 just outside Vienna. His father had been a member of the imperial parliament, and had proposed Bertha von Suttner for the Nobel Peace Prize (which she received in 1905). His son would be nominated for the Nobel Prize for Medicine five times, unfortunately without the same success.

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Read the rest of Austria 2010 50€ Gold Coin Commemorates Physician Clemens von Pirquet (592 words)

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Everyone now knows gold is suppressed, but what’s the difference?

10:50a ET Monday, May 31, 2010

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

Our old friend J.T. poses a question. He writes:

“By now almost everyone knows, thanks primarily to GATA, that the precious metals markets are being manipulated by the U.S. government and some of its allies. There are some who continue to deny it, but I believe that they have become the exception. But even if the last person on Earth learns about the manipulation — let’s say he is a member of some cannibalistic, head-hunting tribe in the Solomon Islands — the manipulators appear uncaring and impervious to this recognition. Indeed, even with such widespread exposure they seem undeterred and hellbent to continue. So why doesn’t the exposure make a difference?”

There’s no way of quantifying it but we know from the behavior of our friends anyway that GATA’s work has encouraged gold acquisition at least that much. If J.T. is correct and most people who pay close attention to the gold market are aware of the price manipulation, then it stands to reason that GATA’s work has encouraged gold acquisition by others as well.

But as crucial as gold is, it remains a small sector of the financial world. Despite its spectacular rise over the last decade, most investors, at least in the West, haven’t given it a thought. Even some of the biggest investment managers who are aware of gold’s performance and are favorably disposed toward gold do not fully understand the difference between real metal and paper claims to metal and so invest in gold exchange-traded funds rather than take possession of bullion. Thus they have their investment used against them by the infinite expansion of the imaginary gold supply to match the infinite expansion of the supply of government currency and credit.

In short, while most of the people who pay the closest attention to gold may now understand government’s historic interest in controlling its price and are aware of some of the mechanisms of that control, that’s still a very small number of investors, short of the point at which enough people understand that particular methods of holding gold can work against them while other methods work for them. Gold being such a small sector and the gold supply being so small relative to the claims sold against it, it may not take too much more effort to reach a tipping point, to turn enough paper claims into delivery claims and blow up the suppression scheme.

After all, the western European central banks, previously active agents in the scheme, seem to be participating much less lately, even as the Russian and Chinese central banks and a few others have become gold buyers. The Bank of Russia has been monitoring and citing GATA’s work for more than six years. (See http://www.gata.org/node/4235.) More recently Chinese officials have been monitoring GATA’s work as well.

Meanwhile, GATA is suing the Federal Reserve in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia for access to the Fed’s gold market intervention documents, possession of which the Fed has acknowledged, if only inadvertently. (See http://www.gata.org/node/8192.) Much has come out of GATA’s prodding and poking the Fed and the Treasury Department over the years. Much more yet may come from it. With the right publicity, the next disclosure may be powerful.

But exactly when will the big break come — the break that leads to the great revaluation of gold we expect, when the central banks are overwhelmed or, perhaps more likely, get in front of the inevitable, using gold revaluation to restore their own solvency, yielding resentfully to some accountability, freer markets, and fairer dealings among individuals and the nations?

Of course we don’t know. We can only keep working to hasten the day, and hope that some of us will live long enough to see it.

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.

* * *

Join GATA here:

World Resource Investment Conference
Sunday and Monday, June 6 and 7, 2010
Vancouver Convention Centre
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
http://www.cambridgehouse.ca/index.php/world-resource-investment-confere…

* * *

Help keep GATA going

GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at:

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To contribute to GATA, please visit:

http://www.gata.org/node/16

Jim Willie explains how infinite money can take gold down in secret

9:15a ET Monday, May 31, 2010

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

Newsletter writer Jim Willie’s latest commentary, “Hidden Dollar Swap Hammer,” suggests the extreme level of surreptitious anti-gold intervention that’s possible in the currency markets when central banks create infinite money and distribute it to their their investment banking friends. Strangely, most establishment financial writers show no curiosity about this money creation and distribution, and some even try to discourage curiosity about it. You can find Willie’s commentary at Financial Sense here:

http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/willie/2010/0526.html

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.

Join GATA here:

World Resource Investment Conference
Sunday and Monday, June 6 and 7, 2010
Vancouver Convention Centre
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
http://www.cambridgehouse.ca/index.php/world-resource-investment-confere…

* * *

Help keep GATA going

GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at:

http://www.gata.org

To contribute to GATA, please visit:

http://www.gata.org/node/16

Two replies to Brett Arends’ disparaging of gold in The Wall Street Journal

10:30p ET Sunday, May 30, 2010

Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:

Gary North has written a comprehensive and brilliant reply to Brett Arends’ essay in The Wall Street Journal last week disparaging gold as an investment. North gets a little angry but he’s been fighting this battle a lot longer than most people and he may be forgiven for losing patience with those who are at best uninformed. North’s essay is headlined “The Wall Street Journal’s War on Gold” and you can find it at Lew Rockwell’s Internet site here:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north849.html

Also replying well to Arends is Robert Blumen, who writes “The Wall Street Journal Does Not Understand How the Gold Price Is Formed.” You can find that essay at 24hGold.com here:

http://www.24hgold.com/english/news-gold-silver-wsj-does-not-understand-…

Your secretary/treasurer made contact with Arends a couple of days ago and encouraged him to review and consider the material in the “Documentation” section at GATA’s Internet site here:

http://www.gata.org/taxonomy/term/21

With his acknowledgement Arends did not seem very receptive, but you never know when people will entertain the possibility that there may be more to a subject than they think.

CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.

Join GATA here:

World Resource Investment Conference
Sunday and Monday, June 6 and 7, 2010
Vancouver Convention Centre
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
http://www.cambridgehouse.ca/index.php/world-resource-investment-confere…

* * *

Help keep GATA going

GATA is a civil rights and educational organization based in the United States and tax-exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. Its e-mail dispatches are free, and you can subscribe at:

http://www.gata.org

To contribute to GATA, please visit:

http://www.gata.org/node/16

Gold Up 3% in May as Commodities and Stocks Fall Sharply

Mark O’Byrne submits:

Gold

Gold is marginally lower and threading water in most currencies today with markets subdued as the London Stock Exchange and Wall Street are closed for national holidays. It range traded from $1,210/oz to $1,214/oz in Asian and early European trading this morning. Gold is currently trading at $1,213/oz and in euro, GBP, CHF, and JPY terms, at €987/oz, £837/oz, CHF 1,043.64/oz, JPY 110,897/oz respectively.

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