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Who's bought and paid for?

Russia: "primitive resource-based economy, systemic corruption, lack of pluralistic democracy"
Russia's President Medvedev

Beneath all of the rhetoric, here is the REAL reason by big boys are fighting to keep CDS from being regulated.

Will the next asset bubble come sooner than we think? Will it be in cleantech? Biotech? Nanotech? Infrastructure? Oil? Gold? Bonds? BRIC economies? Or will the next bubble be Canada? Yes, Canada! Nobody really knows, but big bets are being placed by some very big funds. The only thing I know is the world is awash with liquidity, a bubble is forming and we won't know about it until it's too late.

FHFA's new top cop spoke before the Senate Banking Committee. Strong words. None of them sounded so good to me. Those that think that America's RE and mortgage crisis are behind us should read this. It will get worse before it gets better according to DeMarco. The good news is that he promised the problems at his Agency will come up for discussion before the end of the year. This is going to get interesting.

Did Greenspan know exactly what he was doing?

I do not profess that the main structural arguments of the following essay are mine. Rather they belong to a rather famous former Chairman of the US Federal Reserve named Alan Greenspan as noted in his rather seminal 1966 essay titled “Gold and Economic Freedom”. However, I have taken the specific arguments of that very prescient essay and modified and reinterpreted them to fit into the contemporary situation of our current global and financial crisis (that it its core, is a monetary crisis).

Gold is only about half of its real high.

Overnight, we have learned that multiple Asian central banks intervened to prevent rapid appreciation of their own currencies against the US Dollar. Could we be witnessing the beginning of a currency crisis, or is this simply more water under the bridge?

Yet another advantage for Brazil and India.

Yet another problem for America.

Let me repeat what I stated last August. AIMCo is lucky to have Leo de Bever as their new CEO. The politicians in Alberta should give him a chance to prove himself. I am confident he will succeed in building a great team and add long-term value to the funds he's been entrusted to manage.

Veteran gold traders can attest that piling onto breakouts, especially in highly leveraged futures, can quickly become a losing proposition on a reversal. While yesterday’s surge in gold was confirmed with gold priced in other currencies, there is a slight seasonal negative at work here until the end of October. Traders should recall that the second week of October 2008 began a painful slide after a strong September...

Forget fundamentals. Hedge fund flows, investment banking flows, sovereign wealth fund flows, pension flows, and retail speculation will drive equities and other risk assets much higher. How long can it last? Remember the famous quote from John Maynard Keynes: "The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent."

Dear Congressional Aides:

Here are the questions which should be asked of Gary Gensler and Henry Hu in tomorrow's hearing before the House Committee on Financial Services

The move in gold to new 18 month highs has not been confirmed by backwardation in the gold basis. Caution is warranted for leveraged traders.