Free Republic

FDR, the man who studied Mussolini, who birthed the current intrusive state, who started the drug war in earnest, who put Japanese Americans into concentration camps, who extended the Depression years longer than it needed to be and thereby contributed to the genesis of the Second World War, who tried to pack the Supreme Court, who gave away half of Europe to the Soviets at Yalta, and who confiscated the gold – the real wealth – of the American people. What a guy. And he still has his face on the dime. There is a reason why my grandmother, a...

Tyler Durden 01/23/2015 Submitted by John Rubino via Dollar Collapse blog Yesterday the European Central Bank acknowledged that the currency it manages is being sucked into a deflationary vortex. It responded in the usual way with, in effect, a massive devaluation. Eurozone citizens have also responded predictably, by converting their unbacked, make-believe, soon-to-be-worth-a-lot-less paper money into something tangible. They’re bidding gold up dramatically.(snip)

Poachers kill 300 Zimbabwe elephants with cyanide • Cyanide has been used to kill 300 elephants in Zimbabwe's biggest nature reserve - three times the original estimate - as new photos show the scale of the slaughter Poachers in Zimbabwe have killed more than 300 elephants and countless other safari animals by cyanide poisoning, The Telegraph has learned. The full extent of the devastation wreaked in Hwange, the country's largest national park, has been revealed by legitimate hunters who discovered what conservationists say is the worst single massacre in southern Africa for 25 years. Pictures taken by the hunters, which...

Obama Donor Helped Free Terrorist Behind Benghazi Attack January 8, 2014 by Daniel Greenfield The left is rushing to blame Bush for the Benghazi attack, now that the State Department is moving to name a former Gitmo detainee released by Bush as a key figure in the attack. But Gitmo detainees were released as part of a pressure and lawfare campaign by the radical pro-terrorist left. Including Obama’s backers. The left-wing organization that helped spring Qumu was the Center for Constitutional Rights. Last April, the group issued an indignant press release painting Qumu as a harmless victim and blasting those...

The German central bank, or Bundesbank, said Monday that it stepped up the repatriation of its gold reserves from overseas storage last year. “The Bundesbank successfully continued and further stepped up its transfers of gold,” the central bank said in a statement. “In 2014, 120 tonnes of gold were transferred to Frankfurt from storage locations abroad: 35 tonnes from Paris and 85 tonnes from New York.” Germany’s gold reserves are the second-biggest in the world after those of the United States and totaled 3,384.2 tonnes this month, according to the latest data compiled by the World Gold Council. …

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — A shocking move by the Swiss National Bank sent the dollar reeling and propelled gold to close at its highest level in four months Thursday. In mid-morning European trading hours, Switzerland’s central bank scrapped its long-standing floor against the euro, which sent the Swiss franc EURCHF, +1.76% soaring against the euro and the dollar USDCHF, +1.74% The central bank also cut its interest rate on sight deposits to a negative 0.75%. When the dollar falls, gold prices tend to push higher.

Kurt H. Becker, a professor in the Department of Applied Physics and the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and WeiDong Zhu, a research associate professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, are helping develop a new colloidal gold test strip for cardiac troponin I (cTn-I) detection. The new strip uses microplasma-generated gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) and shows much higher detection sensitivity than conventional test strips. The new cTn-I test is based on the specific immune-chemical reactions between antigen and antibody on immunochromatographic test strips using AuNPs. Compared to AuNPs produced by traditional chemical methods, the surfaces of the...

providers of its core computing infrastructure to shut down operations. The selloff, which appears to have been exacerbated when Asian traders were forced to meet collateral demands under margin trading rules, left bitcoin down 14.49% at $194.04 in the late New York morning Wednesday, following a 15.02% plunge Tuesday, according to news service Coindesk. The digital currency is now down 39% from Dec. 31 alone and is off 83% from the all-time high of $1,165 that it hit at the end of a furious rally in November 2013. ... On Monday, CEX.io, a company that mines bitcoins on behalf of...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is prepared to let Greece leave the eurozone if Greeks elect a government that jettisons the country’s current austerity course, according to German media reports. The report in the Der Spiegel daily, which cited sources close to the German government, comes as polls show a radical leftist party leading the field three weeks ahead of a snap election in Greece. The Syriza party of Alexis Tsipras has pledged to reverse reforms imposed by Greece’s international creditors and renegotiate its bailout deal. …

Do you want to know if the stock market is going to crash next year? Just keep an eye on junk bonds. Prior to the horrific collapse of stocks in 2008, high yield debt collapsed first. And as you will see below, high yield debt is starting to crash again. The primary reason for this is the price of oil. The energy sector accounts for approximately 15 to 20 percent of the entire junk bond market, and those energy bonds are taking a tremendous beating right now. This panic in energy bonds is infecting the broader high yield debt market,...

Using GPS and state-of-the-art sonar, Columbia University researchers recently made the first comprehensive map of the wonders submerged in New York City's harbors. Supplementing those findings with historical data, New York magazine reported the inventory's highlights in May: a 350-foot steamship (downed in 1920), a freight train (derailed in 1865), 1,600 bars of silver (unrecovered since 1903), a fleet of Good Humor ice cream trucks (which form a reef for aquatic life), and so many junked cars near the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges that divers use them as underwater navigation points. Of most concern lately, though, are the wildlife: 4-foot-long...

December30, 2014 John_Rubino Twelve short months ago, the immediate future looked like a lock. Overvalued equities had to fall, ridiculously-low interest rates had to rise, and beaten-down precious metals had to resume their bull market. The evidence was overwhelming. Debt in the developed world had risen to $157 trillion, or 376% of GDP, by far the highest level on record and clearly unsustainable. Long-term US Treasury rates had been falling for literally three decades and despite a recent uptick were so low that the only way forward seemed to be up. Europe and Japan were drifting into recessions that could...

To begin with, Russia has no need to sell gold. In fact, Russia added 150 tonnes of gold to its Central Bank holdings in August, September and October. It didn’t make any sense that Russia would then turn around and sell gold. Why? Russia runs a current account surplus - LINK. It has cash on its balance sheet. Something the U.S. can only dream about, as the U.S. Government has to issue debt every hour to fund itself. The last time the U.S. sniffed a positive balance of payments was in the 1980’s. Second, Russia just got through paying down...

Tyler Durden 12/30/2014 USDJPY has tumbled overnight back below 119.50, dragging stocks (equity futures now at session lows) and Treasury yields with it. But it appears the Gold/Yen trade that is reacting most significantly as a huge volume flushes through futures markets spiking Gold back above $1200...(snip)

A wheelbarrow of money to buy a loaf of bread. This is what Obama, with his fiscal cliff plan, threatens us with. For many years now we have heard chilling tales about that elusive, powerful and manipulative entity conspiracy theorists have called “The New World Order”. Not only have the members of this group managed for the most part to remain anonymous, but their agenda has remained mysterious and obscure. So much so that many good people have been perfectly fine with ignoring its existence or viability. Whether or not this New World Order is in lockstep with World Communism...

In Russia, the overnight lending rates between banks has soared to 19%, a sign of widespread and warranted mistrust between banks, as one bank has failed. To stabilize the situation, Putin is considering bank deposit insurance up to an amount equivalent rate of about $26,000. Meanwhile, and although Russia is still burning through currency reserves, the value of the Ruble has been rising. CNN Money reports Russia Empties the Vault to Prop Up Ruble. So far this year the central bank has burned through more than $110 billion in foreign currency supplies. That's more than a quarter of what it...

[ Secondary blog source: Tyler Durden / The Zero Hedge / www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-12-24/we-live-new-world-and-saudis-are-first-get-it ] There are many things I don’t understand these days, and some are undoubtedly due to the limits of my brain power. But at the same time some are not. I’m the kind of person who can no longer believe that anyone would get excited over a 5% American GDP growth number. Not even with any other details thrown in, just simply a print like that. It’s so completely out of left field and out of proportion that you would think by now at least a few more...

The events of the past few months seem astounding when taken in all at once. The plan to destroy the U.S. dollar and the American middle class is moving at an ever increasing speed. At the recent G20 meeting the nations agreed that bank deposits would no longer be considered money. These bank deposits become the property of the banking institution and as such can be used any way the bank wants. This means that any money you deposit in a bank now is no longer yours but makes you an investor in the bank and subject to lose that...

On the teetering economy and possible economic collapse, Dr. Roberts says, “We know something serious is wrong. The only provision of Dodd-Frank that has any teeth is the provision that says if the big banks are going to be casinos and gamble on derivatives, they cannot do that in the depository institution where depositors have their accounts. They have to farm it out into subsidiaries. So, if the subsidiaries get into trouble, the subsidiaries have no access to depositors’ money. This is the only real reform part of Dodd-Frank. Citigroup got put into the recent spending bill, the repeal of...

Diamonds and precious metals found in the eastern United States might have rained down during the last Ice Age after a comet shattered over Canada and set North America ablaze, all leading to a mass die-off of animals and humans. New chemical analyses of diamond, gold and silver found in Ohio and Indiana reveal the minerals were transported there from Canada several thousand years ago. The question is, how?

Yet Another #TOLDYA: Commodities Giant Ceases ALL Gold Trading There are actually TWO Barnhardt Axioms. The second Barnhardt Axiom is: Seeking and/or holding office, especially national-level office, is today, in and of itself, proof that a given person is psychologically and morally unfit to hold public office. The first, older Barnhardt Axiom is: If you can’t stand in front of something and physically defend it with a firearm, then you don’t own it, and probably never did. The fifth largest Commodity trading company (not a brokerage firm per se, but specializing in trading commodities in both the physical and on...

Shortly before his death in 2007, Manhattan landlord and lawyer Edward Giaimo Jr. revealed to his two siblings a secret — he had hidden a stash of silver and gold worth millions. While being treated for cancer at Mount Sinai Hospital, Giaimo allegedly told his brother and sister that he had stowed away a large amount of precious metals and they would need a truck to move it. The lifelong bachelor added that the metals, believed to be silver bullion and South African gold coins known as Krugerrands, were safe, but they needed to be removed from their hiding spot...

"Russia is at a critical juncture and given the sanctions placed upon them and the rapid decline in oil prices, they may be forced to dip into their gold reserves, if it happens it will push gold lower." That is what, according to some people Bloomberg has quoted, is in the cards.

December 17, 2014 John Rubino To say that gold is in a bear market is to misunderstand both gold and markets. Gold isn't an investment that goes up and down. It is money in the most basic store-of-value sense. Most of the time it just sits there, and when its price changes in local currency terms that says more about the local currency than about gold. But when currencies collapse, gold shines. Consider the above from the point of view of a typical Russian. The ruble is tanking (no need to understand why -- all fiat currencies go this way...

TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - Dec 15, 2014) - YAMANA GOLD INC. (YRI.TO) (AUY) ("Yamana" or "the Company") today announced a new vein discovered at El Peñón and the best drill intersections in the history of Chapada, immediately west of the main pit. At El Peñón the new north-south vein, named Ventura, is expected to lead to expansion of the mineral resource base at what appears to be high grades. The results at Chapada, from the newly discovered mineralization named Sucupira, continue to support the potential of a much larger district of mineralization, which could also significantly expand mineral resources. In both...

The human race is ready to begin harvesting the resources of space both for their use in space and to increase the wealth and prosperity of the entire world. Promotional DSI Video

Asteroid sourced hydrogen and oxygen will literally and figuratively fuel expansion of the space economy by providing a locally sourced fuel resource that will change how industry operates in space. While existing satellites cannot be refueled directly today, space tugs fueled by asteroids that are currently being developed, will maneuver Geostationary satellites into their assigned orbit. Thus, keeping them operating and generating revenue far beyond their current life expectancy. Water from asteroids can also be used for a plethora of other applications beyond fuels in space. It can be consumed, used as a radiation shield for humans during deep space...

On January 16, 2013 Germany's central bank, the Bundesbank, said it will ship back home all 374 tonnes it had stored with the Banque de France in Paris, as well as 300 tonnes held in Manhattan by the US Federal Reserve, by 2020. Fast forward a year and Buba, as the Federal Bank of Germany is affectionately (or maybe not) known, has only managed to bring home a paltry 37 tonnes of gold. And a mere 5 tonnes of that came from the US, the rest from Paris. The US Fed holds 45% of the total 3,396 tonnes German gold....

Criminal scams are not unique to the precious metals industry, as it is but one minor niche of the massive financial markets. However, it is the industry in which I participate. Where possible, I try to help would-be buyers of physical precious metals avoid the crooks. There are many different ways that unscrupulous dealers may try to take advantage of uninformed buyers, but today I want to focus on the problem with people purchasing and paying for merchandise, then never receiving their goods. There have been some operations that never delivered promised merchandise right from the beginning. Such crooks tend...

December 09, 2014 Jeff Clark A glance at any gold price chart reveals the severity of the bear mauling it has endured over the last three years. More alarming, even for die-hard gold investors, is that some of the fundamental drivers that would normally push gold higher, like a weak US dollar, have reversed. Throw in a correction-defying Wall Street stock market and the never-ending rain of disdain for gold from the mainstream and it may seem that there’s no reason to buy gold; the bear is here to stay. If so, then I have a question. Actually, a whole...

Tyler Durden 12/09/2014 Gold prices have surged this morning to their highest since October (over $1221) as leveraged hot money greatly rotates its repo-driven way out of risk assets and into Greenspan's alternative currency. However, there is a bigger problem for the biggest pairs trade that no one is discussing - apart from us - the decoupling of the long Nikkei, short gold trade as the repo market folds in on itself from the suck out of $80 billion in collateral by China... Gold back at its highest since October...(snip)

Do you remember seeing old pictures of the Great Depression which depicted "lines"? There were two types, bread lines and also lines to the front doors of banks. While we don't see any bread lines today, trust me, there are bread lines in every single state, and long ones at that. Nearly 50 million people in the U.S. survive on SNAP, EBT cards or whatever they are called in your state. Can you imagine the "confidence" it would instill if each day on your way to work you saw massive lines of people waiting for breakfast? Or, when you came...

Nick at Sharelynx Gold, also known as Gold Charts "R" Us emailed an interesting chart last week showing gold drain at the New York Fed. Earmarked gold dropped 42 tonnes for the month of October as foreign countries repatriate their gold home. Here's a link to Earmarked Gold with a second chart that shows all Fed holdings. Gold Charts "R" Us has 1,000's of pages and over 10,000 charts on a subscription basis, but you can check out the site for free until December 14. Click on the first link at the top for a look. Where's the Gold Going?...

December 04, 2014 Stefan Gleason writes: Much to the chagrin of the financial elite, gold and silver are reentering the American consciousness and starting to shake the wing nutty image of their recent past. But it’s taken a global financial crisis to get the public’s attention – one that could wipe out our nation at almost any moment. The U.S. government’s role in the economy is on a seemingly interminable upward trajectory. The government’s official debt balance that just crossed the $18 trillion mark (with additional unfunded liabilities estimated at more than $100 trillion). Half the population now lives in...

December 03, 2014 By: Clive_Maund Yesterday was an extraordinary day in the Precious Metals markets, with a good chance that it signals the reversal from the brutal 3-year plus bear market that so many have waited so long to see. The day started with gold and silver plunging on the news that the Swiss voted against backing their currency with gold, but later in the day they rallied strongly on heavy turnover to close with giant reversal candlesticks on their charts. Regardless of the reasons for this bizarre behavior, technically this action looks very positive, and this is written with...

As the Dutch central bank looks to repatriate some of its gold reserves back from the New York Federal Reserve, Dennis Gartman, the editor and publisher of The Gartman Letter, has questioned what reputational damage this could cause for the U.S. The Dutch central bank last week confirmed that it was shipping gold from the U.S. to the Netherlands to "spread its gold stock in a more balanced way", adding that it would have a "positive effect on public confidence". It comes after the Germans made a similar move in 2013, indicating that it would transfer 300 tons from New...

SWISS VOTERS overwhelmingly rejected a so-called gold standard referendum. They were right to do so. The wording of the referendum revealed a major obstacle to any return to a genuine gold standard: ignorance of what makes such a system work. The proposition was actually focused on the levels of Switzerland’s gold reserves, not on an actual return to a gold standard. But it was seen as a step in that direction. The purpose of a gold standard is to keep a currency stable in value. Other currencies not on a gold standard may go up or down vis-à-vis the gold-linked...

Myles Udland December 1, 2014 Gold is exploding higher. In afternoon trade on Monday, gold futures were up better than 3.5% in the last 24 hours to around $1,215 an ounce, moving back above $1,200 for the first time in more than a week. The spike in gold reverses a plunge in gold late last week that was continued on Sunday night as the futures market re-opened after voters in Switzerland rejected a measure that would have required the Swiss National Bank to increase its gold holdings from 8% to 20%. Oil, which also got crushed last week, is also...

Tyler Durden 12/01/2014After last night's big flush across commodities, they have rallied notably. Gold is now up over $50 from those lows, with Silver, copper, and even crude bouncing hard (after testing below $64 overnight). The USD is notably weaker, stocks lower, and bond yields testing mid-October flash-crash Bullard lows...(snip)

Myles Udland November 30, 2014 On Sunday night, gold was down more than 4% to as low as $1,143 an ounce after voters in Switzerland on Sunday rejected a measure that would have required the Swiss National Bank to increase its gold reserves from 8% to 20% of its holdings. The vote failed by a margin of 78%-22%. In addition the drop in gold, crude oil prices are resuming their tumble, and the price of other precious metals — silver and platinum — were also down sharply. Silver futures were down 12% early Sunday night and platinum futures were down...

In today’s Swiss gold referendum, roughly 78% voted against expanding central bank gold reserves to 20% of central bank assets from the current 7%, according to Swiss national broadcaster SRF. The vote is a blow to the movement to “Save Our Swiss Gold” that had the hopes of moving Switzerland back toward a gold standard which the country left in 1999.

Swiss voters have overwhelmingly rejected a plan to force the Swiss National Bank to buy thousands of tonnes of gold, giving the SNB breathing space as it attempts to protect the franc against a quantitative easing blitz from the European Central Bank. Switzerland's government said on Sunday afternoon that 77pc of voters in Sunday’s referendum rejected proposals to make the central bank hold 20pc of its assets in the precious metal. This result was a blow to a right-wing Swiss People’s Party, which launched the “Save Our Swiss Gold” campaign in a reactionary backlash against the SNB accumulating hundreds of...

Gold miners’ costs are mostly higher than current spot prices, increasing the likelihood of writedowns next year, according to Nick Holland, chief executive officer of Gold Fields Ltd. Across the industry, costs are about $1,300 an ounce including debt repayments, Holland said by phone from Johannesburg today, citing analysts’ research. Gold dropped 0.1 percent to $1,182 an ounce, bringing the decline since the beginning of 2013 to 29 percent. “The industry by and large is under water,” Holland said. “I would expect further writedowns. Production I think will be curtailed but it will take some time to filter through the...

An interesting way to harden the US dollar and make it less of a fiat currency would be to sell the US oil reserve and use the proceeds to buy gold to store in Ft Knox or elsewhere. For those who know their dollar and oil reserve history--this is 180 reversal of policies set in the 1970's because of a 180 reversal of circumstances. In the 1970's US oil production peaked and went into decline while the US dollar went off the gold standard and went into decline. What's different now? 1.)Fracking has shown that the USA now has 100...

On Sunday, the people of Switzerland will go to the voting booth to decide their nation’s economic future. The “Swiss gold vote,” as it’s being called, would require that the nation put its currency back onto a gold standard, which would require the Swiss central bank to buy large amounts of gold from the global market in order to put their currency on a gold-based standard. The Swiss gold vote will have historic implications whether the citizens of Switzerland vote yes or no this weekend. This referendum is a measure that sets requirements for the Swiss National Bank (SNB) with...

Tyler Durden11/29/2014 A week ago, when we reported that in a stunning move, the "Dutch Central Bank Secretly Withdrew 122 Tons Of Gold From The New York Fed", and when looking at the NY Fed's monthly reports of gold deposits by foreign entities, we observed that "we can see that while the 5 tons outflow in 2013 was most likely Germany, the recent surge in gold repatriation from Liberty 33 was the Netherlands. That said, only 77.5 tons of NY deposits gold has been officially repatriated through September, which means the October update, when it comes out, will be a...

On-again, off-again plans for the world's largest gold and copper mine could be back on again, after a federal judge in Alaska issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Environmental Protection Agency from its ongoing efforts to bury the project. Pebble Partnership, the Canadian company behind the project, which would take place near Anchorage, claims the regulatory agency has conspired illegally with opponents of the mine to devise scientific and environmental justifications for blocking it. Salmon fishermen in Washington state and Alaska, Native American groups and environmental organizations have opposed the massive project for several years, and had appeared to have...

For most of my career in international investing, I had always placed a great deal of faith in Switzerland's financial markets. In recent years, however, as the Swiss government has sought to hitch its wagon to the flailing euro currency and kowtow increasingly to U.S.-based financial requirements, this faith has been shaken. But this week (November 30th) a referendum in Switzerland on whether its central bank will be required to hold at least 20% of its reserves in gold, will offer ordinary Swiss citizens a rare opportunity to reclaim their country's strong economic heritage. It's a vote that few outside...

Canadian scientists probing the metal content of coins exchanged thousands of years ago in Mediterranean Europe have discovered a new way to map ancient trade patterns, to retrace economic ups and downs at the dawn of Western Civilization and even to shed new light on the collapse of the Roman Empire. Researchers at McMaster University in Hamilton have launched a research project in which nuclear radiation is used to identify changes in metal content among ancient Greek and Roman coins held in a world-class collection amassed at the university since the 1940s... A joint project between the university's classics department...

I found it very suspect that our King plus a huge trade delegation visited Japan a day before Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda announced the new extreme surprise round of stimulus. Gold Repatriation Stunner: Dutch Central Bank Secretly Withdrew 122 Tons Of Gold From The New York Fed http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-11-21/gold-repatriation-stunner-dutch-central-bank-secretly-withdrew-122-tons-gold-new-yor Need Tips on Sticking to your Trade Plan? Global Consequences The impact of the Dutch gold repatriation can be huge. First of all, because it underlines more and more countries are getting nervous about their gold reserves stored in the US. Venezuela repatriated most of its reserves from abroad in...