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Run On The U.S. Dollar ....Soon Currencies / US Dollar Nov 30, 2009 - 04:33 PM By: DailyWealth Porter Stansberry writes: It's one of those numbers that's so unbelievable you have to actually think about it for a while... Within the next 12 months, the U.S. Treasury will have to refinance $2 trillion in short-term debt. And that's not counting any additional deficit spending, which is estimated to be around $1.5 trillion. Put the two numbers together. Then ask yourself, how in the world can the Treasury borrow $3.5 trillion in only one year? That's an amount equal to nearly...

Debt Fuelled Zombie Capitalism, Bernanke "Marching Ignorantly Forward" Economics / US Debt Dec 01, 2009 - 08:20 AM By: Mike_Shedlock Australian economist has another blockbuster post on the dynamics of debt deflation and the Great Financial Collapse. Please consider Debtwatch No 41, December 2009: 4 Years of Calling the GFC. During a debt-driven financial bubble, which is the obvious precursor to a debt-deflation, rising levels of debt propel aggregate demand well above what it would otherwise be, leading to a boom in both the real economy and asset markets. But this process also adds to the debt burden on the...

Gold Hits Record Near $1,200/Oz As Dollar Slips Tue Dec 1, 2009 5:53am EST By Jan Harvey LONDON (Reuters) - Gold hit record highs near $1,200 an ounce on Tuesday as dollar weakness fueled buying of the metal as an alternative asset, while investors speculating on further gains were cheered by its recovery from Friday's lows. Spot gold hit a peak of $1,198.70 an ounce and was bid at $1,194.90 an ounce at 1021 GMT (5:21 a.m. EST), against $1,179.10 late in New York on Monday. "The fact that we are seeing the dollar weaken is helping to drive gold,"...

It's 2012 and it's payday. You're tired, but after work you drag yourself straight to the grocery store to load up on a couple weeks worth of provisions for your family. You're shocked at tonight's high prices, but you know they'll be even higher by morning. You used to keep some money in the bank for a rainy day, but now you've learned to spend it all as soon as you get it, before it loses buying power. On the other hand, the huge salary raises you keep getting have made it pretty easy to pay off the old credit...

Porter Stansberry writes: It's one of those numbers that's so unbelievable you have to actually think about it for a while... Within the next 12 months, the U.S. Treasury will have to refinance $2 trillion in short-term debt. And that's not counting any additional deficit spending, which is estimated to be around $1.5 trillion Put the two numbers together. Then ask yourself, how in the world can the Treasury borrow $3.5 trillion in only one year? That's an amount equal to nearly 30% of our entire GDP. And we're the world's biggest economy. Where will the money come from? How...

U.S. Dollar Set To Surprise By Falling To Test All Time Low Currencies / US Dollar Nov 30, 2009 - 01:48 PM By: Captain Hook The dollar ($) is set to surprise the few remaining speculators that think it can't happen by falling further straight away, possibly taking it down to test all time lows at 71. Here, we are talking about the possibility of a more disorderly decline in the $ developing as a result of gold progressing into a parabolic rise, primarily predicated on year-end hedge fund buying into December. First it will be this that takes precious...

Underwater? Maybe You Should Walk Away From Your Mortgage? By Ilyce Glink | Nov 30, 2009 | 7 Comments According to the latest figures, some 23 percent of Americans are underwater with their mortgage. That means their home is worth less than the amount they owe to their lender.If you have a job, and can afford your payments, being underwater may not cause anything other than a really bad headache. But if you’ve lost your job, you’re probably running through all of your available cash plus anything you can beg, borrow and perhaps steal in order to keep making your...

America, as synonymous with the people who created the Federal Union known as the United States of America, was born to a gold standard; was intended, always, to remain on a gold standard! No reading of Article I, Section 10, of the Constitution, coupled with key provisions of Article I, Section 8, can lend itself to any other interpretation. The first paragraph of Section 10 reads in relevant part: No State shall . . . make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts.Note, there is no exception provided. Contrast that paragraph with the second...

My mother-in-law produced a huge collection of pennies and issued each of us a stack of 50. The first round was Screw Your Neighbor. Everyone anteed up 3 pennies and very quickly a pot was accumulated in the middle of the table. We played winner take all, alternating between games: Bishop’s Pride, Baseball, Dime Store, 5 Card Stud, 5 Card Draw, and variations where we assigned wild cards such as One-Eyed-Jacks, black 7’s and such. Some of us, noticing our stacks of pennies were becoming depleted, simply reached into the penny jar and took more pennies to stay in the...

Intuit Inc. has completed its acquisition of Mint.com, a provider of online personal finance services based in Mountain View, Calif. The transaction, announced Sept. 14, is valued at approximately $170 million and enhances Intuit's position as a leading provider of consumer, software-as-a-service offerings that connect customers across desktop, online and mobile. Intuit and Mint.com together, the groups noted, will help redefine personal finance, delivering online services that help consumers save and do more with their money. By integrating with Intuit, Mint.com quickly gains access to resources to accelerate both product development and growth. According to a release, it is expected...

Money on the table — perhaps $10 billion a year or more — could help close a deal in Denmark next month and keep climate talks moving toward a new global treaty in 2010. But if poorer nations see too little offered up front, the U.N. conference could end in discord. The money would help developing countries cope with ocean flooding, drought and other effects of climate change, while also helping them cut down on emissions of global-warming gases. The funds might eventually come from new sources, such as a tax on airline flights, but negotiators for now are seeking...

Dubai...a Harbinger of Financial Armageddon? Martin Banner 11/27/09 We have been warning of the coming economic collapse and the ramifications to follow, which will be food riots, chaos in the cities world wide leading to rioting, looting and bringing on a climate that will require declarations of martial law to try and quell that chaos, for some time now. This economic chaos, coupled with higher prices for food and lower harvest yields world wide, will set the scene for the four horseman of the book of revelations to ride and bring us into the time of the great tribulation period...

OSU's Second Amendment Center Runs Out of Ammo [Robert VerBruggen] Ohio State University's Second Amendment Center, funded largely by the anti-gun Joyce Foundation, has called it quits. Randy Barnett has details over at the Volokh Conspiracy. Barnett argues that the Center closed because its purpose — to argue against an individual-right interpretation of the Second Amendment — was rendered moot by Heller. In NR last year, I detailed how the Joyce Foundation funded law-review symposia on the Second Amendment (subscribers can read my piece here). Whatever the Foundation and Center's problems, I found the Center's head, Prof. Saul Cornell, very...

Investors Buy Gold As Central Banks On Course To Crash World Economy Commodities / Gold & Silver 2009 Nov 26, 2009 - 02:59 AM By: Bob_Chapman Investors buy gold when there is inflation and when there is a flight to quality. They buy gold when they no longer trust currencies, due to government or central bank profligacy. Due to those and other reasons gold has broken out to new highs. It could well be that gold may never see $1,000 again. Long ago the world’s central banks set the course for a planned collapse of the world economy to implement...

Dollar Falls To 14-Year Low VS Yen, Touching 86.51 By MALCOLM FOSTER, Associated Press TOKYO – The dollar tumbled to 14-year low against the Japanese yen Thursday after indications U.S. interest rates will remain low and that the Federal Reserve isn't overly concerned about the dollar's slide. The dollar sank to 86.51 yen in Tokyo trading, the lowest since July 1995. Analysts said some investors were selling the dollar to buy gold, which surged to another record Thursday. Finance Minister Hirohisa Fujii said Japan "will take appropriate steps if foreign exchange rates move abnormally." A strong yen is generally seen...

The Huntington Planning Commission had a major item on their desk last week. It was a new proposed signage ordinance. The first ordinance was established in 1984. The new proposal had business owners showing up at the meeting, causing the vote to stall. Because of the outcry, the vote has been set to take place in December.

Negative Interest Rates Are No Cause For Panic Vincent FernandoNov. 22, 2009, 3:08 AM We've highlighted before why recent negative treasury bill yields aren't sustainable, aren't reason to panic, and are just due to end of the year window dressing by financial companies. The excellent fixed income blog Across the Curve takes it further, highlighting commentary from CRT Research that basically supports this view. They interestingly add that the negative yields we're seeing might be partially caused by the fact that we have less investment banks and more 'plain vanilla' financial companies with December 31st year-ends. It's a great example...

We're In The Money

...So why the run on the CoinStar machines? Answer: Those piggy banks (or coffee cans or cookie tins or whatever) are no longer just fun little ways of saving back a few bucks. They’re grocery money, or school supplies, or maybe the electric bill. People are being weighed down with bills they can’t pay and the load is getting heavier. I took my big $22.68 and bought food. It was either that or draw money against my next paycheck. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out this is a bad sign. People are running out of money. And...

Velocity Of U.S. Money Supply Is Finally Edging Up Prieur du Plessis November 20, 2009 Despite ballooning Fed reserves to bail out banks, money supply as measured by the growth in money supply with a zero maturity (notes and coins, check accounts, savings deposits and money-market accounts collectively) continues to slow. The slowing growth is contra to what normally happens when the Fed lowers the Federal funds rate. In real terms, the growth rate is also slowing.[snip]

The national debt is now at 12,031,299,186,290.07. That is not chump change. We are in hock big time and even if we were to pawn off all our national parks and pimp out every member of congress, it would be a long, long time for us to pay it off. Suffice to say, we will never live to see a huge chunk out of the debt paid off, nor will our children or their children or their children's children or their children's children's children. In fact, we would have to open a big book of biblical begats before the debt...

Zinc Dimes, Counterfeit Tungsten Gold And Lost Interest Commodities / Gold & Silver 2009 Nov 18, 2009 - 11:40 AM By: Jim_Willie_CB In 1964 the USGovt introduced the zinc dimes clad with silver. They at least admitted the debauchery publicly. Now pre-1964 silver coins are all considered different, and valued differently too, higher. Rome committed the same coinage fraud 1900 years ago. Their Empire went bust as the city burned almost concurrently. Ayn Rand is a guiding light for Alan Greenspan, the enabling destroyer of the US banking system, destroyer of the US household archipelago, and dispatcher of the US...

The Effectiveness Of Fiscal And Monetary Stimulus In Depressions Miguel Almunia Agustín S. Bénétrix Barry Eichengreen Kevin H. O’Rourke Gisela Rua 18 November 2009 There is one important source of information on the effectiveness of monetary and fiscal stimulus in an environment of near-zero interest rates, dysfunctional banking systems and heightened risk aversion that has not been fully exploited: the 1930s. This column gathers data on growth, budgets and central bank policy rates for 27 countries covering the period 1925-39 and shows that where fiscal policy was tried, it was effective. The debate over the effectiveness of stimulus rages on...

China Currency Manipulation About To Trigger Protectionism Crisis Currencies / China Currency Yuan Nov 15, 2009 - 06:38 AM By: Bryan_Rich I’ve written several times here in Money and Markets about the geopolitical time bomb surrounding China’s currency manipulation. The most recent was in my October 31 column. I expect this issue to grow in intensity and become a major point of contention for the global economy in the coming year. In recent days the chatter about China and its artificially weak yuan has been picking up. The Europeans have become more vocal about the problems a weak yuan is...

China Quashes Talk Of Letting Yuan Strengthen The Chinese government has sought to distance itself from speculation surrounding a central bank statement earlier this week that was interpreted as a shift in currency policy towards a stronger yuan. By Garry White Published: 9:14PM GMT 14 Nov 2009 The Chinese yuan: friends take a photo in front of a sculpture of a one-hundred yuan banknote in Beijing According to an analysis from Morgan Stanley, the authorities are now seeking to recalibrate the message. In its third-quarter monetary policy report on Thursday, the People's Bank of China left out a standard phrase...

Authorities have been examining whether Fort Hood massacre suspect Nidal Malik Hasan wired money to Pakistan in recent months, an action that one senior lawmaker said would raise serious questions about Hasan's possible connections to militant Islamic groups. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., said sources "outside of the [intelligence] community" learned about Hasan's possible connections to the Asian country, which faces a massive Islamist insurgency and is widely believed to be Osama bin Laden's hiding place. Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, would not identify the sources. But he said "they are trying to follow up on it...

China's Economic Miracle Is A Fragile OneEdmund Conway says that the country's leaders risk creating the same type of asset bubble that floored Japan. By Edmund Conway Published: 6:29PM GMT 11 Nov 2009 Chinese vendor counts money at open market in Beijing. Photo: Reuters Every economist has a favourite fact about the Chinese economy. Mine is this: every month the country generates so much surplus cash from trade that it could afford to go out and buy three of Britain's biggest companies – say, British Telecom, Rolls Royce and J Sainsbury. Every single month. The £9.8 billion that Kraft proposed...

Testing Time For The USD And Aging Stock Market Rally Stock-Markets / Financial Markets 2009 Nov 11, 2009 - 12:31 PM By: Garry_Abeshouse No one alive has probably experienced a time when so much highly geared money has been controlled by so few large corporations, who with their accumulated power, have governments all over the world running scared. This power has been magnified with the continued availability of government handouts and cheap funding from the USD Carry Trade. This has created an "Open Sesame" to a monetary wish list that has no limits for those involved. It makes for a...

Can you imagine how many people have physically handled your money? Do you know who has previously touched it? Did they have a flu virus or some other communicable disease that is transmitted by physical contact with an infected object? Physical paper currency is often dirty - not so much to the sight, but it is a good home for dangerous microbes. It is often kept warm by our body heat and even absorbs some body moisture - a perfect breeding ground for bad stuff. It has been well-known for decades that paper currency is a major source of disease...

U.S. Dollar Meltdown Currencies / US Dollar Nov 10, 2009 - 12:42 AM By: Mike_Shedlock I had the pleasure of reading a final finished copy of The Dollar Meltdown by Charles Goyette this past week. Congressman Ron Paul offers an opinion on the front cover to which I certainly concur: "Goyette does a great job explaining why America faces a looming financial crisis and outlines commonsense strategies for individuals to protect themselves and their families. This book truly is a must read." Before publication, I read a preliminary copy which explains this quote on the back jacket "The Dollar Meltdown...

Soros: The World Is Facing Another Stark Choice By Rocky Vega 11/09/09 Stockholm, Sweden – George Soros, Chairman of Soros Fund Management, has written a piece that examines the “stark choice” between “international capitalism,” which he sees as the flagging US model, and “state capitalism,” represented by a rising China. To him neither of these two options is ideal, and he looks instead towards the development a new multilateral system. His editorial is strongly supportive of the expanded usage of IMF Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), and the vigor of his enthusiasm seems bearish for the dollar. He recommends international cooperation...

When the Borrowers Stop Borrowing By Bill Bonner 11/09/09 Beunos Aires, Argentina – The Dow moved up 17 points on Friday, leaving it above the 10,000 mark. Gold rose too – it is at a new record high, only $5 below $1,100.(The DJIA closed today up 203 points) According to the news reports, the US economy is ‘growing’ again. Yes, that’s the official storyline. But wait, what kind of growth is this? David Rosenberg: “All we can say is that if the overwhelming consensus is correct that the recession is behind us, then what we have on our hands is...

Don't Do It! (Cashing Out 401ks)Monday, November 9. 2009 Posted by Karl Denninger in Consumer at 08:44 Grrrrr.... As the last of his severance pay dwindled away in March, Brad Cleghorn of northwest suburban Marengo cashed out his 401(k) plan in order to pay his mortgage and feed his family. Cleghorn is not alone. A Hewitt Associates study shows that 46 percent of workers with 401(k) plans who lost or switched jobs cashed the plans in, a trend that could lead to serious problems when younger generations of people working today reach retirement. That's not the real problem folks. Let...

The Problems With “Printing Your Way Out Of Debt” By Bill Bonner 11/07/09 Beunos Aires, Argentina – Governments are running breathtaking deficits…and accumulating alarming debts. Japan has a national debt of nearly 200% of its GDP. Where did that debt come from? It came from 20 years of trying to buy its way out of a slump with borrowed money. Of course, it didn’t work. But now, Britain and America are following the Japanese lead…and the Japanese are still at it! At the present rate, Japan’s government debt will grow to 300% of GDP in 10 years. America’s debt could...

More Extortion By The BanksThe Market TickerSaturday, November 7. 2009 Posted by Karl Denninger in Corruption at 13:14 Yeah, that's a strong word. In my opinion it is also the only word that's appropriate for the circumstances: The Fed has been informed by dealers that they would be willing to enter into very sizable amounts of reverse repos with the Fed, if asked to do so, provided they could get some relief from Tier I capital constraints, MNI also understands. Ah, the old "let us lever up and we'll do it, but if it blows up, we'll then be back...

BACHELORS always seemed to have it made. With only themselves to support, they could flash their cash and trick out their apartments in such a way that James Bond himself would feel at home shaking himself a martini in their ultra-cool, chick-magnet pads.

Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar burnt more than £1million to keep his daughter warm during a single night on the run, it has emerged. The infamous cocaine baron lit a bonfire using wads of U.S. dollars at a mountain hideout while he was being hunted by authorities, his son has claimed. Sebastian Marroqumn, who has changed his name from Juan Pablo Escobar, said his father burnt the notes when he realized daughter Manuela was suffering from hypothermia...

The Government Will Default On Its Debts Economics / Great Depression II Nov 02, 2009 - 08:01 AM By: Gary_North The governments of every major nation are going to default on their debts. There are two relevant questions: (1) How? (2) When?Establishments around the world all deny this. They have gained power and wealth by means of the expansion of government. They have justified their success by insisting that the government-business alliance is the only way to establish economic growth and economic security for the masses. This claim rests on a more fundamental claim, namely, that an unhampered free market...

No one saw the truck drive off, it left the alley between the bank and another business. You could pick up the cash and no one would see you. What should you do?

Bank Of England Called On To Increase QEThe Bank of England has been urged to increase its quantitative easing (QE) programme to a total of £225bn – more than the gross domestic product of Greece. By Edmund Conway, Economics Editor Published: 8:56PM GMT 31 Oct 2009 The Bank's Monetary Policy Committee, which is meeting this week, will be pushed by economists to raise the amount of bonds and gilts it plans to buy by a further £50bn, following the recent news that unlike almost any other major economy Britain remains mired in recession. The increase would mean the Bank would...

High-dollar fundraisers have been promised access to senior officials and use of White House facilities in exchange for thousands of dollars in donations, documents reveal. During his first nine months in office, President Obama has quietly rewarded scores of top Democratic donors with VIP access to the White House, private briefings with administration advisers and invitations to important speeches and town-hall meetings. High-dollar fundraisers have been promised access to senior White House officials in exchange for pledges to donate $30,400 personally or to bundle $300,000 in contributions ahead of the 2010 midterm elections, according to internal Democratic National Committee documents...

Gold Gives A Precious Insight Into Economy What a strange and fascinating commodity gold is – a store of value that is no one's liability, which cannot be printed or debauched by governments but which, with no income stream, has no objective value. A simultaneous hedge against both deflationary slump and inflationary spiral, it is little wonder gold should be the investment of choice for the Armageddon crowd. By Tom Stevenson Published: 6:26PM BST 24 Oct 2009 Gold attracts conspiracy theories like no other asset. Google "Yamashita's Gold" and enter into a half-plausible thriller of Japanese wartime loot and abandoned...

A tip from an Albuquerque aircraft charter company led Moriarty Police to an airplane with an unusual cargo— suitcases full of more than $1 million in cash. Moriarty Police Chief Bobby Garcia said the two currency-filled suitcases seized from an airplane at the city's airport on Nov. 27 weighed more than 300 pounds. They contained $1,169,896, Garcia said Wednesday. No arrests have been made in the ongoing investigation. The events that led to the cash seizure began when a private plane requested an emergency landing at the Moriarty Municipal Airport due to engine problems around noon on Thanksgiving. Garcia said...

King Dollar Forced To Abdicate Currencies / US Dollar Oct 23, 2009 - 04:12 PM By: Peter_Schiff For the most part, the value of the dollar is given cursory attention by the financial media. Typically, its movements are assigned an importance on par with much less determinative metrics such as natural gas futures and construction permits. It's only when major milestones are reached that anyone really takes notice of the dollar. We are living through one of those times. The great dollar rally of 2008-2009 has come full circle. When the financial crisis exploded in its full ugliness in mid-2008,...

Possible Credit Dislocation: Be WarnedFriday, October 23. 2009 Posted by Karl Denninger in Musings I have reason to suspect that the "monetary transmission mechanism" is full of rocks (again), and we are about to have another instance of what could colloquially be called "fun." (Yes, that's sarcasm.) Here's what we know and what I can deduce from it: * JP Morgan's "cash position" was analyzed by a writer who published on SCRIBD, which showed that actual cash held has deteriorated radically. By more than half in the last year. The deterioration is continuing, not slowing. * I am hearing repeated...

And So It Begins (Dollar Warnings)Friday, October 23. 2009 Posted by Karl Denninger in Monetary at 08:47 I have been on a potential dollar dislocation - or collapse - for more than two years. Indeed, back in the fall of 2007, it was one of the themes of petitions to Congress and letters I sent under personal cover to all 535 members. The debt liquidation cycle of 2008/early-09 appeared to stop the deterioration. Unfortunately that cycle was interrupted - intentionally - by enabling a continuing pattern of lies and fraud within our government. This has reversed all of the gains...

Dollar Hegemony For Another Century By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard October 21st, 2009 Let me stick my neck out. The dollar will still be the world’s dominant reserve currency in 2030, sharing a degree of leadership in uneasy condominium with the Chinese yuan. It will then regain much of its hegemonic status as the 21st century unfolds. It may indeed end the century even stronger than it was at the start. The aging crisis in Asia — and indeed the outright demographic implosion in Japan and China, not to mention China’s water crisis — will soon be obvious to everybody. Talk of...

Niall Ferguson: The Dollar Is Finished And The Chinese Are Dumping It Joe WeisenthalOct. 20, 2009, 2:50 PM Economic historian Niall Ferguson warns that China's love affair with the dollar is fading faster than anyone realizes. TechTicker: "The idea they don't have anywhere else to go or would shoot themselves in the foot if there were a steep decline in the dollar or appreciation of their currency reassures many people in Washington ‘we can relax'," he says. "An appreciation of the renminbi may reduce value of their international reserves but increases the value of every other asset the Chinese own,"...

Why the Dollar Will Likely Rally in the Next Crash by: Washington October 20, 2009 As I have previously noted, HSBC currency chief David Bloom doesn't think that the dollar will rally when the stock market next tanks: The dollar rallied last year because we had a global liquidity crisis, but we think the rules have changed and that it will be very different this time [if there is another market sell-off]. Is he right? I have argued that the new dollar carry trade could very well unwind during the next crash, which could create an enormous need for dollars....

The Giant Pool of Money What does the housing crisis have to do with the turmoil on Wall Street? Why did banks make half-million dollar loans to people without jobs or income? And why is everyone talking so much about the 1930s? It all comes back to the Giant Pool of Money I have wanted to hear this or read the transcript every since I first heard portions of it on my car radio. I was driving to Pennsylvania on Interstate 81 with a destination of McConnellsburg to join some friends for a week-end of camping and shooting skeet. I...