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Tyler DurdenFebruary 1, 2016 Willem Middlekoop, author of The Big Reset – The War On Gold And The Financial Endgame, believes the current international monetary system has entered its last term and is up for a reset. Having predicted the collapse of the real estate market in 2006, (while Ben Bernanke didn't), Middlekoop asks (rhetorically) -can the global credit expansion 'experiment' from 2002 – 2008, which Bernanke completely underestimated, be compared to the global QE 'experiment' from 2008 – present? - the answer is worrisome. In the following must-see interview with Grant Williams, he shares his thoughts on the future...

So It Begins: Bloomberg Op-Ed Calls For An End Of Cash http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-31/bloomberg-op-ed-calls-end-cash So It Begins: Bloomberg Op-Ed Calls For An End Of Cash Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/31/2016 In a moment of curious serendipity, a little over 90 minutes after we showed what a dystopian, centrally-planned, cashless society unleashed in a negative interest rate world would look like ("by forcing people and companies to convert their paper money into bank deposits, the hope is that they can be persuaded (coerced?) to spend that money rather than save it because those deposits will carry considerable costs"), and briefly after we...

Although there has been early support from some Republican candidates to put the U.S. monetary policy back on the gold standard, many analysts say there isn't the political will to make this a major issue during the 2016 election. Monday, Iowans cast their vote in the first primary election to nominate their candidate to run for President late in the year. The Republican field is fairly wide with 12 candidates on the ticket in Iowa. Of the 12 candidates, the idea of moving back to a gold standard has been supported by five;, Senator Ted Cruz, Senator Rand Paul, Dr....

Sitting in a courtroom three years ago, after skipping out on a sizable legal bill, Hillary Rodham Clinton’s youngest brother struck a reassuring tone: Don’t worry, the money is coming. “I deal through the Clinton Foundation,” Tony Rodham said, according to court transcripts uncovered by the New York Times. He gave his word that Hillary and Bill were setting him up with Haitian-government permits to build a $22 million housing development in the earthquake-stricken country. “I hound my brother-in-law, because it’s his fund that we’re going to get our money from,” Rodham explained, promising a $1 million check once the...

Greece today (and Cyprus before it) offers a case study of how capital controls bifurcate a currency and distort business incentives... Once euro deposits are imprisoned within a national banking system, the currency essentially splits in two: Bank euros (BE) and paper, or free, euros (FE). Suddenly, an informal exchange rate between the two currencies emerges. Consider a Greek depositor keen to convert a large sum of BE into FE (say, to pay for medical expenses abroad, or to repay a company debt to a non-Greek entity). Assuming such depositors find FE holders willing to purchase their BE, a substantial...

John_Rubino January 10, 2016 As China’s leaders figure out that pegging the yuan to the dollar while quintupling their debt in five years was a colossal mistake, they are, apparently, concluding that the only way out is a sudden, sharp currency devaluation. See Pressure on China central bank for bigger yuan depreciation. Chinese citizens, meanwhile, are anxiously awaiting tomorrow’s market open while mentally repeating the same three lines: Sure am glad I bought that gold last year. Wish I’d bought more gold last year. Wonder what I’ll have to pay for gold next week… Here’s what that looks like in...

As Wall Street axioms (Santa rally, January effect, as goes January etc.) are rapidly falling by the wayside at the start of 2016, following a chaotic but return-less 2015, the UBS analysts who correctly forecast last year's volatility are out with their forecast for 2016. It's simple - Sell Stocks, Buy Gold. UBS Technical Analysts Michael Riesner and Marc Muller warn the seven-year cycle in equities is rolling over.

Sometimes, funny-money promoters like to dangle the idea that the "gold standard," in U.S. or world history, was a short-lived episode dating from about 1870 to 1914, a period of only forty-four years. I take a rather different viewpoint, that gold (and its adjunct, silver) was the primary basis of monetary affairs around the world for millennia, stretching up to 1971. When we look at the history of monetary arrangements, we find that gold and silver were usually used together, in what I sometimes call the "gold/silver complex." The reality was that silver and gold traded in a tight band...

Earlier this week, we told a fascinating story about an unprecedented, multi-year smuggling ring involving Turkey, Iran, and Dubai (as well as China, Russia and countless other nations) which saw corruption reaching to the very top of the political and financial establishment: from president Erdogan in Turkey, to one of Turkey's richest people, Iran-born Riza Sarraf, to Sheikh Sultan Bin Khalifa Al Nahyan, the son of the ruler of Abu Dhabi and one of the world's richest people. The smuggled object in question was gold, billions of dollars worth of gold. The focus of the story was the previously unknown...

There is no evidence that a Nazi train rumoured to be carrying gems and gold has been found in Poland, experts say. Researchers presenting findings about the alleged discovery in the Polish town of Walbrzych said there might be a tunnel but no train. However, one of those who claimed to have found the train said he still believed it was there.

For 182 years "1789 to 1971" the United States embraced the principle of a "stable dollar,"...[snip]...people had discovered that the best way to do this, in an imperfect world, was to link the value of the currency to gold. [snip] Britain "which in the 17th century had been an economic backwater of no great significance "then became the financial capital of the world, the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, and ruler of the greatest global empire of the era.Not bad. [snip] The New York Times, surveying the landscape of contemporary thought, told us recently that out of 40 "leading economists",...

The IMF just confirmed Breitbart News’ October 5 warning that Saudi Arabia’s cash reserves are in free-fall, with a new estimate that the world’s richest kingdom may be bankrupt by 2020. Each October, the International Monetary Exchange issues its World Economic and Financial Regional Surveys. For the first time since the 1960s, the region set to suffer the worst financial agony over the next five years is the Middle East. Ground Zero for that pain is Saudi Arabia.

hris Skinner is a banking and technology and technology veteran who serves as the chairman of the Financial Services Club, a group created in 2004 to address the future of companies that serve financial markets. I’m often asked how quickly the changes I outline will take place, and my answer is between 10 and 20 years. The building of the real-time, almost free financial network on the Internet using blockchain and mobile will take about a decade at least before it becomes mainstream. "Oh," some go. "That's a way off. Can we talk about something happening sooner?" That's an interesting...

What is the best and least expensive way to buy gold for an investment?

Flashing some interplanetary gold bling and sipping "space water" might sound far-fetched, but both could soon be reality, thanks to a new US law that legalizes cosmic mining.In a first, President Barack Obama signed legislation at the end of November that allows commercial extraction of minerals and other materials, including water, from asteroids and the moon. That could kick off an extraterrestrial gold rush, backed by a private aeronautics industry that is growing quickly and cutting the price of commercial space flight. The US Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act of 2015 says that any materials American individuals or companies find...

Due to what industry analysts say is a strengthening U.S. dollar, an expected rate hike from the Federal Reserve and an apparent Chinese stock market slump, the precious metal's prices temporarily fell to a longtime low of $1,051 an ounce. The commodity's price closed at $1,055.90 on the New York Mercantile Friday, CNN reports. The price indicates gold's decline in popularity since reaching its highest price of $1,890 in 2011.

Ted Cruz rocked in the presidential race during the CNBC debate. His biggest breakthrough, even more important than his crowd-pleasing holding the media to account, was his credible prescription to get job creation, and equitable prosperity, roaring the way they roared in the Reagan days. Cruz thereby seized, like nobody else yet has, the Reagan jobs-creation and income mobility mantle. Reaganomics had two main legs. Both were widely ridiculed at the time. Both were vindicated by history. The more famous of these was Reagan's dramatic cutting of income tax rates, across the board, to stimulate economic growth, a policy drawn...

"Investors" are so desperate to hold on to short-term paper that they paid $100 for a 3-month Treasury-bill at today's auction. That is a 0% yield - for the first time ever - lower even than the auction right after Lehman's bankruptcy in Nov 2008. It is probably safe to say that NIRP is next, followed by more negative yields further to the right of the curve, as the US gradually becomes Europe. But don't worry: as Yellen admitted during her healthcare-scare speech, "nominal interest rates cannot go much below zero", just a little.

Dying Petrodollar Ripples Through Markets As Asset Managers Bemoan Loss Of Saudi BidOne of the key things to understand about China’s liquidation of hundreds of billions in US paper is that far from being a country-specific phenomenon, it actually marks the continuation of something that’s been taking place in other emerging markets for some time.As we outlined in “Why It Really All Comes Down To The Death Of The Petrodollar,” the forced sale of Beijing’s UST reserves is simply the most dramatic example of what Deutsche Bank has called “quantitative tightening.” For years, reserve managers in the world’s emerging economies...

With countless settlements documenting the rigging of every single asset class, it was only a matter of time before the regulators - some 10 years behind the curve as usual - finally cracked down on gold manipulation as well, even though as we have shown in the past, central banks in general and the Fed in particular are among the biggest gold manipulators. That said, we are confident by now nobody will be surprised that there was manipulation going on in the gold casino. In fact, ever since Germany's Bafin launched a probe into Deutsche Bank for gold and silver...