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While gold is undoubtedly one of the most traded substances on earth, it also happens to be one of the most valuable substances by weight. Although prices fluctuate, one gram of gold will cost you on average around $35. This got us thinking about how much other primarily naturally occurring substances out there cost.

Perhaps weak manufacturing, construction, and trade data are mere outliers.  Maybe the Fed can see beyond the fog to clearly capture the big picture.  Or maybe the Fed has lost its marbles.  Their outlook doesn’t jive with that of the regular working stiff.

"The increasingly frequent departures from Constitutional principles are destroying the Rule of Law foundation on which this country was built... The cure to these problems will not come from Washington D.C. Instead, the states must lead the way. The irony for our generation is that the threat to our Republic doesn’t come just from foreign enemies, it comes, in part, from our very own leaders."

- Texas governor Greg Abbott

... And the Shias - Not the Sunnis - Are Sitting On Most of the Oil

An unseen bubble at the heart of the financial system is deflating with unknown consequences. When bubbles deflate, and here we are talking about one in the hundreds of trillions, bad debts are usually exposed. Even though much of the reduction in outstanding OTC derivatives is due to consolidation of positions following the Frank Dodd Act, much of it is not. When free markets reassert themselves, and they always do, the disruption promises to be substantial. We appear to be in the early stages of this event. If so, demand for physical gold can be expected to escalate rapidly as a financial crisis unfolds.

Late last month, amid heightened tensions between Washington and Tehran, Iran conducted a live-fire exercise in the Strait of Hormuz in close proximity to the USS Harry Truman, one of Ash Carter’s fleet of aircraft carriers. On Saturday, the US released a video of the incident.

"After suffering the worst start to a new year in history, the U.S. stock market has entered correction territory which is defined by a drop of 10% from its old high. The following "hateful eight" charts pretty much speak for themselves... This doesn't bode well for U.S. stocks which are now in the riskiest position since the bull market started seven years ago."

Here’s a newsflash that CNBC didn’t mention. According to the BLS, the US economy generated a miniscule 11,000 jobs in the month of December.

Central Banks have employed virtually all of their ammunition including policies that would have been considered "nuclear" in 2008. And the debt bubble is $20 trillion larger than it was in 2008!

“The commonwealth has committed itself to a ‘scorched earth’ strategy of blaming its fiscal and structural problems on lenders, Congress and others, in an effort to deflect responsibility and obtain retroactive application of bankruptcy laws.”

In the eyes of Western bankers, it was the perfect “scheme” – hence their label for the plan. In the eyes of any sane, rational, human being, it was/is the most naked, clumsy fraud that one could possibly imagine. But the corporate media assured us there was considerable enthusiasm amongst India’s population for this scam. However, in two weeks, out of a population of more than one billion people, holding an estimated 40 million pounds of gold, the Conspirators managed to steal less than 0.000002% of India’s privately held gold. So we’re now told that India’s government sees “temple gold” as its best/easiest target for stealing.

To the degree that the current crisis has anything to do with religion, it’s much less about whether Abu Bakr or Ali was Muhammad’s rightful successor and much more about who’s going to control something more concrete right now: oil.

South Korea - which Kim Jong-Un says is "jealous" of the North's "H-bomb" test - has resumed blaring anti-Pyongyang propaganda over loudspeakers installed on the two countries' border, a move the North says has once again brought the Korean Peninsula "to the brink of war."

Love guns or hate guns, one thing is becoming perfectly clear. The American public’s perception of guns and the NRA is moving in the exact opposite direction of Barack Obama’s message and agenda.

At this point, the longer China does nothing, the greater its problems will become. As such Beijing needs to choose: either collapse the economy in a deflationary wave, leading to a debt crisis and widespread social unrest, or devalue massively overnight in hopes of stimulating inflation, leading to collapsing profit margins, and even more widespread social unrest.In short, our condolences China: having decided to adopt Western neo-Keynesian economics, with the typical monetarist bent, you too are now trapped with no way out. But don't worry: so is everyone else. Good luck.