Archive - Aug 2014

The summer months frequently see seasonal weakness as has been the case in recent years and since gold became a traded market in 1971. Gold and silver often see periods of weakness in the summer doldrum months of May, June and July.

With regard this week’s market debacle, the question, of course, is whether this was simply a blip – yet another one-day BTFD opportunity – or the start of something bigger and worse. The answer, we think, depends on how the media Narrative surrounding the week takes shape over the next several days. Right now the media Narrative about the week is in complete disarray, because there was no obvious “reason” for the sell-off. Or rather, there were too many possible reasons, from bad earnings reports to the Argentina default to worries about a strong jobs number to Espirito Santo cracking up to new Russian sanctions to just a generic “we were overdue for this”. From a game theory perspective, this sort of seemingly out-of-the-blue sharp move had very little to do with anything that happened this week, but is a natural by-product of the Common Knowledge Game in action.

U.S. Busted Faking Satellite Photographs In Both Iraq Wars

Ten times a year, once a month except in August and October, a small group of well dressed men arrives in Basel, Switzerland.  Carrying elegant overnight bags and stylish brief cases, they discreetly check into the Euler Hotel, across from the railroad station. They come to this quiet city from places as disparate as Tokyo, Paris, Brasilia, London, and Washington, D.C., for the regular meeting of the most exclusive, secretive, and powerful supranational club in the world.

The gold price manipulation scheme will go down as the biggest financial market scandal in US history for numerous reasons. They include the destruction of the free market system in the United States.

• Portugal may use the Resolution Fund to recapitalize Banco Espirito Santo, Diario Economico reports, citing unidentified people linked to the process.
• Resolution Fund may inject more than €3 billion
• A “bad bank” may be created for the toxic assets of the credit portfolio
• Solution aims to rescue Banco Espirito Santo without spending taxpayers’ money, and is being prepared by the government and the Bank of Portugal
• From Aug. 4, Banco Espirito Santo will leave the stock market and will be 100% owned by the Resolution Fund, an entity created in 2012 and financed by Portuguese banks and by revenue from the special contribution that the banking sector pays the Portuguese state

When it comes to diplomacy, John Kerry may have rapidly become the biggest laughing joke in US State Department history, but that doesn't mean his exchanges weren't valuable to others. Others such as Israel, whose relations with the US have gone from worse to atrocious in recent months, and which as Spiegel just revealed, had eavesdropped on John Kerry on at least one occasion, during Mid-East peace negotiations. Israel would then use the information obtained from the calls during its own negotiations in the Mideast conflict. Further, Spiegel reports that at least one other intelligence service also listened in as Kerry mediated last year between Israel, the Palestinians and the Arab states. The German publications adds wryly that "revelations of the eavesdropping could further damage already tense relations between the US government and Israel" although with Netanyahu openly refusing Obama's demands about a Gaza ceasefire, one wonders just how much worse things between the two "allies" could get.

"Obama should just resign. He is outrageous. He supported the NSA and has claimed the CIA does not spy on Congress. Well, the Inspector General has released his report and oops – yes the CIA spies on Congress. Obama has used the NSA, IRS, and the CIA to attack everyone. These people behind the curtain are the unelected. Obama is either a stooge or part of the real danger to the survivability of our nation long-term."

"The greater-than-expected weakness in the consumption snapback signals significant downside risk to our forecast of 4.6% decline for Q2 real GDP (sequential annualized). While we expect lower imports, higher inventories, and other factors to support GDP to some extent, we see negative real GDP growth of around -6.5% as likely, based on the data currently available."

Alarm bells in the European banking system have been ringing for quite a while but nobody seems to be listening. The roaring capital markets are just too loud. But we have been keeping track of a few things.

A work in progress...

With the spigot of propaganda wide open and Washington appearing increasingly bent on instigating the next war, we thought lessons from past "wars" might help the people when thinking about what is spoon-fed to them each and every day. "To Sell A War" is a documentary that first aired in December 1992 exposing the Citizens for a Free Kuwait campaign as public relations spin to gain public opinion support for the Gulf War. Among other things, it reveals that Nurse Nayirah was in fact Nijirah al-Sabah, the daughter of Kuwait's ambassador to the United States Saud Nasir Al-Sabah, coached by Hill & Knowlton to forge her infamous testimony about Iraqi soldiers removing babies from incubators, which was widely reported and repeated throughout the media.

A plane carrying Dr. Kent Brantly, the American doctor who contracted Ebola while treating patients in West Africa, landed at Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta, Georgia, at around 11am this morning - the first ever case of Ebola on US soil. He is being escorted to Emory Hospital under police escort. His colleague Nancy Writebol will arrive later on a separate flight as the planes are equipped to deal with one quarantined patient at a time. As ABC reports, both are listed in "serious but stable condition." The CDC's director explained the infected patients pose little risk to others, adding "these are American citizens. American citizens have a right of return. I certainly hope people’s fear doesn’t trump their compassion." What is perhaps raising that fear among Americans (and frankly the world after yesterday's WHO warning of "high risks of spread to other countries") is the fact that, as Reuters reports, more than 100 health workers fighting Ebola have contracted it themselves.

A stunning $5.3 trillion in goods cross South China Sea every year, and as we previously explained, 190 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves sit below the ocean floor - enough to replace China's natural gas imports for over a century - so it is hardly surprising that the world's largest importer of oil wants control of such a critical region. As Bloomberg illustrates in these 10 incredible graphics, everyone has a claim on the same territory and tensions are rising. “The Chinese believe they have the right to be a great power,” said Richard Bitzinger, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. “What we are seeing is a hardening of China’s stance about its place in the world.”