Global Meltdown of Historic Proportions & A Fork in the Road

"With continued volatility in many of the key global markets, 40 year veteran, Robert Fitzwilson wrote this exclusive piece for King World News.  Fitzwilson is founder of The Portola Group, one of the premier boutique firms in the United States.  Here are Fitzwilson’s observations:  “The Central Banks have been pursuing a very flawed strategy.  Unfortunately, full speed ahead might be the only remaining alternative.  Printing money to stimulate growth, in the face of declining/aging workforces and falling productivity, will result instead in lowering aggregate real returns for investors and exponential depreciation of fiat currencies..."

at http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2012/5/9_Global_Meltdown_of_Historic_Proportions_%26_A_Fork_in_the_Road.html

John Hathaway - 8 Key Charts, Gold, Fed & The Big Picture

at http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2012/4/22_John_Hathaway_-_8_Key_Charts,_Gold,_Fed_%26_The_Big_Picture.html

Currency Wars: Rickards On Gold, QE, and the Economy

"Jim Rickards is interviewed by FutureMoneyTrends.com. 


Part 1 is focused on Gold manipulation and why gold plays such an important role in the world, even if conventional wisdom doesn't believe so, gold is not only being watched by central bankers, as Mr. Rickards put, "the gold price is being managed."

Part 2 expands into the economy and probability of more quantitative easing (QE). According to Mr. Rickards, QE will come in the next few months because it can't be done this fall since it will look political, and if the FED tries to wait until December, it will be too late..."


at http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/2012/04/jim-rickards-is-interviewed-by.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+JessesCafeAmericain+%28Jesse%27s+Caf%C3%A9+Am%C3%A9ricain%29

Von Greyerz - Bank Failures, Disorder, Massive Panic & Gold

"The banking world is on the way to bankruptcy here. We’ve talked about the leverage in the banking system, but people don’t seem concerned about it. What we are going to see, one day, is when these dominos start falling, there will be panic.

Banks are supposed to come down to 20 times leverage. There is only one bank of the top twenty-five banks in the world today that is below 20 times leverage. Every other bank is above. 20 times leverage means that if they only lose 5% on their loan book, they have lost their capital.

I will bet you that virtually every bank in the world has a bad debt position which is worse than 5% of their assets. And if you look at an entity such as Deutsche Bank, do you know what their leverage is? 62 times. It means that if they have a bad debt position of 1.5%, the bank is bust. Deutsche Bank is bigger than German GDP. So, if something happens to Deutsche Bank, Germany goes under.

Credit Agricole, the largest French bank, has 63 times leverage. This is absolutely frightening. This situation is untenable. Some of these banks will not survive. Of course, central banks are aware of this, governments are aware of this, and they will print money. Will they print in time? Maybe for some banks, but some banks will not survive, I’m sure.

The two big Swiss banks combined total 7 times Swiss GDP. The banks have a leverage which is unsustainable, and in many cases are bigger than the countries themselves.

So, central banks, being aware of this, are going to keep accumulating more and more gold. And that trend will accelerate because central banks know that buying bank debt or government debt is a bad move. So, all of these dominos that will fall are going to accelerate the trend into gold.

The IMF came out with a report yesterday saying we are very near a eurozone breakup, a disorderly one. That would create panic in the market. There would be an even greater flight of deposits out of the banking system which would make the situation even worse.

The IMF is coming out with statement after statement that should frighten the world. Today they said that European Banks will have to sell roughly $3.8 trillion in assets. In reality, it could be well over $10 trillion in the next couple of years.

We are in a mess, Eric, and the IMF recognizes this. The central banks know this as well, but for right now they are trying to tell the markets, ‘We are not going to print any more money.’ They will print money. The know they will print money. 

The IMF, by making these statements, is saying central banks are going to have to print money, just to sustain the financial system. Improvements in the economy are unthinkable, things are going to get a lot worse.”

at http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2012/4/18_Von_Greyerz_-_Bank_Failures,_Disorder,_Massive_Panic_%26_Gold.html

Central Banks Stockpiling Gold & Governments Hoarding Oil

"With gold and silver set up for a big move this week, today King World News interviewed 40 year veteran, Robert Fitzwilson. Fitzwilson is founder of The Portola Group, one of the premier boutique firms in the Unites States. He told KWN that investors need to accumulate key assets while they remain undervalued. Fitzwilson also said gold, silver and oil are being hoarded by a combination of central banks and governments. Here is what Fitzwilson had to say: “It is critical that people distinguish between price and value. As prices fall and ‘utility’ stays the same, that is what creates greater value. In the case of oil, gold and silver, not only is the utility holding steady, but it is actually rising.”

Robert Fitzwilson continues:

“As we learn that the spare capacity to produce oil is flat to declining, the economic value of the existing production rises. As central banks have realized that they were dramatically overexposed to fiat currencies and underexposed to gold, utility for them went from ‘nice to have’ to ‘critical to have.’

The reality is that the value of gold and silver is climbing every day even as the price is becalmed or periodically taking a nosedive...."

athttp://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2012/4/1_Central_Banks_Stockpiling_Gold_%26_Governments_Hoarding_Oil.html

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On Europe's 'Stealth' Money Printing

"While much has been made of the public side the ECB's money-printing facade whereby any and every piece of junk collateral can be lodged with the lender-of-first-last-and-only-resort in return for shiny new Euros to spend on government bonds (or save as the case seems to be), there is another facility - the Emergency Liquidity Assistance program (ELA) - that skirts under the radar. As Goldman notes today, the ELA enables the National Central Banks (NCBs) to provide 'liquidity' beyond and above the regular refinancing operations. While the amounts are not quite on the scale of the LTRO, they are large and continue to play a crucial role in stabilizing certain segments of the Euro area banking sector. But, of course, as seems always to be the case, the unintended consequence of this temporary emergency facility is that it appears to have become a permanent facility. This consequence has two rather ugly consequences, it removes still further collateral (assets encumbered) from bank balance sheets and further delays the needed adjustment process (read deleveraging) across the banking sector..."

at http://www.zerohedge.com/news/europes-stealth-money-printing

Caesar Bryan - Central Banks Aggressively Buying Gold

" Caesar told KWN that central banks have been aggressively accumulating physical gold into weakness in the paper price of gold. Caesar went on to discuss silver and the mining shares as well, but first here is what he had to say about gold: “Well, there’s been a bit of a transfer from the paper players, those involved on the COMEX and in the futures market who have been liquidating. On the other hand, the physical buyers, including central banks, are stepping in to accumulate gold.”

Caesar Bryan continues:

“The central banks have been accumulating a great deal of physical gold at these lower levels. So there’s a bit of a tug of war going on between the futures market and the physical market."

at http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2012/3/23_Caesar_Bryan_-_Central_Banks_Aggressively_Buying_Gold.html

Tungsten-Filled 1 Kilo Gold Bar Found In The UK

"The last time a story of Tungsten-filled gold appeared on the scene was just two years ago, and involved a 500 gram bar of gold full of tungsten, at the W.C. Heraeus foundry, the world's largest metal refiner and fabricator. It also became known that said "gold" bar originated from an unnamed bank. It is now time to rekindle the Tungsten Spirits with a report from ABC Bullion of Australia, which provides photographic evidence of a new gold bar that has been drilled out and filled with tungsten rods, this time not in Germany but in an unnamed city in the UK, where it was intercepted by a scrap metals dealer, and was supplied with its original certificate. The reason the bar attracted attention is that it was 2 grams underweight. Upon cropping it was uncovered that about 30-40% of the bar weight was tungsten. So two documented incidents in two years: isolated? Or indication of the same phenomonenon of precious metal debasement that marked the declining phase of the Roman empire. Only then it was relatively public for anyone who cared to find out on their own. Now, with the bulk of popular physical gold held in top secret, private warehouses around the world, where it allegedly backs the balance sheets of the world's central banks, yet nobody can confirm its existence, nor audit the actual gold content, it is understandable why increasingly more are wondering: just how much gold is there? And alongside that - while gold, (or is it GLD?), can be rehypothecated, can one do the same with tungsten?..."

at http://www.zerohedge.com/news/tungsten-filled-1-kilo-gold-bar-found-uk

As Retail Sells, Central Banks Wave Gold In With Both Hands

"As recent entrants in the gold market watched paralyzed in fear as gold tumbled by over $100 on the last FOMC day, on the idiotic notion that Ben Bernanke will no longer ease (oh we will, only after Iran is glassified, and not before Obama is confident he has the election down pat), resulting in pervasive sell stop orders getting hit, others were buying. Which others? The same ones whose only response to a downtick in the market is to proceed with more CTRL+P: the central banks. FT reports that the recent drop in gold has triggered large purchases of bullion by central banks in recent weeks. "The buying activity highlights the trend among central banks in emerging economies to buy gold, even as some western investors are losing patience with the metal. Gold prices have dropped 13.8 per cent from a nominal record high of $1,920 a troy ounce reached in September, and on Friday were trading at $1,655.60." Well, as we said a few days ago, "In conclusion we wish to say - thank you Chairman for the firesale in physical precious metals. We, and certainly China, thank you from the bottom of our hearts." Once again, we were more or less correct. And since past is prologue, we now expect any day to see a headline from the PBOC informing the world that the bank has quietly added a few hundred tons of the yellow metal since the last such public announcement in 2009: a catalyst which will quickly send it over recent record highs.

More on what was perfectly obvious to most except the propaganda pushers:

The Bank for International Settlements, which acts on behalf of central banks, has been buying significant quantities of gold on the international market amid falling prices, traders said.

According to several estimates, the BIS bought 4-6 tonnes of gold, worth roughly $250m-$300m at current prices, in the over-the-counter physical market last week, with purchases particularly strong at the end of the week. The total purchases over the past three or four weeks were likely to be as much as double that, the traders added.

In a note to clients this week, Credit Suisse referred to “aggressive central bank buying seen last Friday”..."

at  http://www.zerohedge.com/news/retail-sells-central-banks-wave-gold-both-hands